 President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has repeated a demand that France apologise to Algeria for "genocidal" colonial rule, saying this was the only way to turn a chronically ill relationship into true friendship. Bouteflika's remarks are likely to annoy French authorities, ...
| ... who nevertheless assumed the proper position ... |
... who only last month were dismayed when the Algerian leader said France's 132-year possession of the giant oil-exporting north African country amounted to a genocide of Algerian identity. France is trying to shore up its diplomatic and economic influence in Africa's second largest country at a time when the United States is developing more oil interests and trade across the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
| Being an old-fashioned fellow, I have a hard time relating to this seeming need for constant apologies for events that occurred in the remote past. It takes me two trips through all my fingers and toes to count the number of years since Algeria's independence, with a third trip started. Prior to that, Algeria was a part of metropolitan France. If it was a part of France, of course France committed at least something like mayhem of its Algerian identity, though I'd call "genocide" verging on hysteria. It also seems to me that Algeria didn't have much of an identity before the arrival of the Frenchies, with their penchant for development, certainly not as much of an identity as Tunisia and Libya and Morocco. In fact, I think Algeria used to be the mostly empty area between Morocco and Libya, a pirate den controlled by the Bey of Algiers. If I was Chirac, which thankfully I'm not, I'd tell them to piss off; if they want to be friends they should be working on letting bygones be bygones, and the Frenchies can work on trying to forget the terrible things the locals did to the pieds noirs. But Chirac being Chirac, and France being part of modern Europe, I'm sure an apology is just a matter of time. |
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