Algeria: Ramtane Lamamra replaced by Ahmed Attaf at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ahmed Attaf returns this Friday, March 17, the chair of Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he had already held from 1996 to 1999. Photo taken at the opening of the UN General Assembly, September 28, 1998, in New York. © Timothy A. Clary / AFP

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In a government reshuffle, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Thursday (March 16th) sacked veteran Ramtane Lamamra as foreign minister and appointed Ahmed Attaf. The man with a long diplomatic career had already occupied this portfolio between 1996 and 1999, during the "black decade", under President Liamine Zéroual.

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Ahmed Attaf, who graduated from the National School of Administration (ENA) in Algiers in 1975, is a veteran of Algerian diplomacy. He began his diplomatic career as ambassador to India, the former Yugoslavia and the United Kingdom, before being Secretary of State for African and Maghreb Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s.

He was, with Ramtane Lamamra, the closest associate of the then minister, Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi.

Ahmed Attaf is therefore finally only returning to a position he has already known. "His career is as rich as that of his predecessor," says TSA, a French-language Algerian online media.

In 1994, after his appointment to the government, and even before becoming head of Algerian diplomacy, he wrote a memorandum in which he informed President Zéroual of the need to close the borders with Morocco. What he gets from the head of state by invoking the harmful effects on the Algerian economy of smuggling between the two countries.

But in 2014, in statements taken up by the press, he deplored the lack of efforts undertaken to unblock Algerian-Moroccan relations.

As part of the cabinet reshuffle, which involved a dozen chairs, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune sacked Ramatane Lamamra, his veteran foreign minister. At 71 years old and in office since 2021, the former head of diplomacy was nevertheless very appreciated by his peers. "This folds the cards of the presidential election," according to Kader Abderrahim, researcher and author of Geopolitics of Algeria.

According to Kader Abderrahim, President Tebboune sacked Ramatane Lamamra because "he no longer represented a threat to the power of the Algerian president"

Houda Ibrahim

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Read on on the same topics:

• Algeria
• Abdelmadjid Tebboune
• Diplomacy