A few days ago, the visit of the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune to France was confirmed following a phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.
It is in this context that, according to the French daily “Le Figaro”, announced on Wednesday 18 January, that the Algerian Chief of Staff Saïd Chanegriha is expected “at the end of January” in Paris, to meet his counterpart Thierry Burkhard to prepare Tebboune’s visit scheduled for next May. It should be noted that this visit is symbolic, because the last was that of the Algerian general staff Gaïd Saleh in May 2006 and since then no head of the Algerian army has gone to France on an official visit.
On August 25 and 26, 2022 during French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Algeria, Chief of Staff Saïd Chanegriha and his French counterpart met and discussed during this interview the security situation in the Sahel and the strengthening of cooperation between the armies of the two countries.
Still, according to Le Figaro, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Descôtes should come to Algeria on January 25, 2023, at the “invitation of her Algerian counterpart, Amar Belani”.
What about relations between Algeria and France since August 2022?
Macron’s visit to Algeria last August improved the bilateral relationship, after a crisis linked to comments he made in October 2021.
At the end of 2022, the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune had not failed to welcome the new “relationship of trust” between France and Algeria, announcing a State visit to France in 2023, in an interview he gave to the French daily Le Figaro.
Another file had distorted the bilateral relationship between the two countries, the halving in the fall of 2021 of the granting of visas to Algeria, Paris reproaching Algiers for not readmitting its nationals expelled from France. The French government had finally announced in mid-December a return to normal for Algerian nationals.
Tebboune and Macron during the visit of the French president to Algiers in August 2022
