Paris (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron praised Tuesday his good relations with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune while the two countries are going through a diplomatic crisis for which the French president wishes to find a way of "appeasement".

"My wish is that there is an appeasement because I think it is better to talk to each other, to move forward," he said in an interview with France Inter, calling for "to recognize all these memories "and" allow them to coexist ".

Emmanuel Macron sparked the wrath of Algiers after remarks reported by the newspaper Le Monde last Saturday accusing the Algerian "politico-military" system of maintaining a "memorial rent" on this war by serving his people an "official history" which "is not based on truths".

"I have the greatest respect for the Algerian people and I maintain really cordial relations with President Tebboune", he declared on France Inter, insisting once again on the quality of this relation.

He had already praised his counterpart in a major interview with the weekly Jeune Afrique in November 2020 and suggested that he does not have free rein according to comments reported by Le Monde: "I have a good dialogue with President Tebboune, but I see that he is caught in a system which is very harsh ".

Emmanuel Macron, the first French president born after the Algerian war ended in 1962, undertook an unprecedented work of memory on this war, a painful memory for millions of French people, many of them of Algerian origin.

Abdelmadjid Tebboune, born in 1945, is also the first Algerian president not to have participated in the war of independence that began in 1954.

"He is someone in whom I trust," said on France Inter Mr. Macron about Mr. Tebboune.

The latter is however a pure product of the Algerian state apparatus set up at the end of the war, in which the military leaders are preponderant even if officially the army has no political role.

The army is "the backbone of the Algerian state", for example, declared Mr. Tebboune in August.

While some important anniversary dates are fast approaching (the bloody repression of Algerian demonstrators in Paris on October 17, 1961, and especially the Evian agreements of March 18, 1962 putting an end to the war), Emmanuel Macron has multiplied memorial initiatives .

He commissioned a report from the historian Benjamin Stora, acknowledged the assassination of Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel in 1957, returned the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters from the 19th century, asked "forgiveness" from the harkis, these Algerian auxiliaries to the army. French.

- "Friendly and proportionate words" -

He believes that France is doing "in-depth work with French and Franco-Algerian youth".

"And so, we say things to each other that are not pleasant for ourselves. I did not spare us with our own history," he said.

"When the question was asked about the reception of Benjamin Stora's report in Algeria, I was obliged to tell President Tebboune the truth, we talked about it and it is someone in whom I have confidence. He had friendly and proportionate words. "

But in Algeria, "a lot of people insulted, sometimes threatened Benjamin Stora following this report. We are not going to act as if it were nothing," he said.

However, he believes that this memorial work, "it is first and foremost a Franco-French problem. We must continue to do this work with a lot of humility, with a lot of respect".

Mr. Macron did not mention another of his remarks on Algerian history which also aroused the anger of some Algerians.

"The construction of Algeria as a nation is a phenomenon to watch. Was there an Algerian nation before French colonization? That is the question. There were previous colonizations. Me, I am fascinated to see Turkey's ability to make people totally forget the role it played in Algeria and the domination it exercised (it was then the Ottoman Empire, editor's note). we are the only colonizers, it's great, ”he said according to Le Monde.

© 2021 AFP