President of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune received a phone call from his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Sunday and discussed the former’s planned visit to France in May 2023.
The two leaders exchanged wishes for the new year and discussed issues on bilateral relations, the Presidency of the Republic said in a statement
In an interview published in the French weekly Le Point, Macron stated that he does not intend to “ask for forgiveness” over his country’s colonization of Algeria.
“It’s not relevant, and the word [forgive] would break all bonds,” Macron told French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud during his state visit to Algeria back in August 2022.
Algeria gained its independence in 1962, after an eight-year war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
“Speaking up on Algeria is potentially perilous, but indispensable. It’s difficult because it’s an intimate topic for each [country]” which created “70 years of trauma,” the French leader highlighted.
He noted: “We have denied ourselves the right to mention this era. An entire generation of French politicians has contributed to the omission, and built itself around it.”
Nevertheless, “it is not up to the president of the republic to claim an assessment of colonialism,” he concluded.
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