Far-right French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour said Monday he wanted to talk “between men” with Algerian leaders, dismissing any “repentance” from France and announcing that he would remove, if elected, the 1968 agreement facilitating the work and residence of Algerian immigrants.
“It’s our weakness that makes Algerian leaders arrogant, but they will respect people who respect themselves,” Mr. Zemmour, himself of Algerian origin, told the Foreign Press Association (APE).
“They will understand what I will tell them, that there is no French culpability”, he continued, while relations between Paris and its former colony have always been complex and turbulent, especially on memorial issues.
“If we colonized Algeria for 130 years, we were neither the first nor the only ones, Algeria has always been a land of colonization, by the Romans, the Arabs, the Turks, the Spaniards”, added Mr. Zemmour.
“France left more things than all the other colonizers,” he said, citing “the roads, the health institutes that France left, the oil that France found and which feeds 40 million Algerians.
“There were massacres, clashes, I absolutely do not deny it, but opposite they did not fight with roses, it is the history of the world”, he launched, a few months from the 60th anniversary of the Évian agreements (March 18, 1962) which paved the way for the independence of Algeria.
“To the Algerian leaders, I say: we speak between men, between responsible people”, continued Mr. Zemmour, believing that the two countries had things to do together and common interests, such as securing Mali.
But “Algeria will have to stop considering that France is the outlet of its demographic excess”, he warned, saying in particular that he was determined to abolish a Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968 facilitating movement, work, and the stay of Algerians in France.
Besides, “repentance will not even be a topic of discussion,” he concluded.
