Not enough to calm things down.
Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra blamed a “memorial bankruptcy” on the part of French President Emmanuel Macron for the diplomatic crises between France and his country and Mali, according to comments broadcast by Malian television.
Ramtane Lamamra also affirmed the need for certain foreign leaders to “decolonize their own history”, according to these statements released Tuesday evening after his meetings with the Malian transitional leaders in Bamako.
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He evoked the crisis triggered between Algiers and Paris by the words attributed to Mr. Macron by the French daily Le Monde on the Algerian “politico-military” system which would maintain a “memorial rent”.
These tensions coincided with the tensions between France and Mali, Algeria's neighbor and another former French colony.
This crisis was aggravated by the speech of September 25 at the UN in which the Malian Prime Minister of transition Choguel Kokalla Maïga accused France, engaged militarily in Mali since 2013, of "abandonment in full flight" to justify a possible appeal. from Bamako to the Russian private company Wagner.
"They need to free themselves from certain attitudes, certain behaviors"
"Our foreign partners need to decolonize their own history", declared Ramtane Lamamra, reacting to the remarks reported by Le Monde, without evoking the wish "of appeasement" expressed Tuesday by the French president.
“They need to free themselves from certain attitudes, certain behaviors, certain visions which are intrinsically linked to the incoherent logic carried by the supposed civilizing mission of the West, which has been the ideological cover used to try to convey the a crime against humanity that was the colonization of Algeria, the colonization of Mali and the colonization of so many African peoples, ”he continued.
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The Algerian minister described this "decolonization" as a "priority" so that the "memorial bankruptcy" manifested according to him by the recent French remarks towards Algeria and Mali can "be cleaned up by unconditional mutual respect, respect for our sovereignty, respect for our decision-making independence ”. He did not mention Mr. Macron by name but spoke of "memory bankruptcy, which is unfortunately intergenerational among a certain number of actors in French political life, sometimes at the highest levels", and "which pushes the relations of official France with some of our countries in unfortunate crisis situations ”.
He spoke of "active solidarity" with Mali, where Algeria is a key player in the security and multidimensional crisis that the country has been going through for nearly ten years, in particular as a sponsor of the peace agreement signed in 2015. , whose application leaves much to be desired.
The Malian authorities for their part summoned the French ambassador to Bamako on Tuesday to express their "indignation" after very vigorous criticism from Mr. Macron following Mr. Maiga's speech at the UN.
