Emmanuel Macon, the French president, declared this Saturday during the 60th anniversary of the Evian agreements (March 19, 1962) and the ceasefire in Algeria, at the Elysée, that “this date does not mark the beginning of peace nor the end of the war, nor the end of this history of which we are all the heirs. But it was a milestone. This date can neither be the only one nor be denied”.
I think the day will come when Algeria will take this path
He also said he “assumed” the memorial gestures, sometimes controversial, made since the beginning of the five-year term on the Algerian war, saying he was convinced that “a day will come when Algeria will take this path”. “I assume this outstretched hand” to Algeria, declared the head of state.
He recalled all the initiatives taken since 2017 to “appease” the memory of this war which, with “its unspoken”, has “been the matrix of many resentments” in France as in Algeria.
“Many will tell me: you are doing all this, but you are not serious because Algeria is not moving. Each time, all my predecessors were faced with the same thing, ”he said in front of some 200 guests. “I think the day will come when Algeria will take this path,” he added.
The “hideous crimes of colonization will not be forgotten”
No Algerian official was present at the Elysee, although the ambassador to France, Mohamed-Antar Daoud, had been invited, according to the Elysee. Relations between the two countries are marked by a certain appeasement after two years of tensions.
In Algiers, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said Friday that the memorial file should “inevitably be treated in a responsible and fair manner in a climate of frankness and trust”. But the “hideous crimes of colonization will not be forgotten and cannot be time-barred”, he warned in a message issued by the presidency on the occasion of this anniversary, celebrated in Algeria on March 19 as a ” victory party “.
There will be feelings of injustice again
Emmanuel Macron, candidate for a new presidential term on April 10 and 24, affirmed his certainty that memorial gestures would be continued in the coming years. The next one is scheduled for October 18 for a tribute to the conscripts who fought during the war.
“There will still be times when we stumble, there will inevitably be times of nervousness, there will still be feelings of injustice. But we will get there,” he concluded.