APS : Wednesday, 08 February 2017
ALGIERS- Algeria and France should continue working on the “firm bases” of partnership which were established by the Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Francois Hollande, affirmed Tuesday President of Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly Elisabeth Guigou.
“Our two countries will each embark on an election period, with the presidential and legislative elections in France and legislative elections in Algeria in 2017. During this period, we should continue working on the firm bases of partnership which were established by Presidents Hollande and Bouteflika, in Algiers in December 2012, during the French President’s State visit,” she said in an interview with APS.
She underlined, in this regard, that the high-level intergovernmental Committee, held for the first time in Algiers in December 2013, “allowed the French and Algerian governments to meet each year in order to work on all the aspects of the bilateral relations.”
In the economic field, the Algerian-French Joint Economic Committee (COMEFA), which meets every year since November 2014, was created to be “a forum of privileged dialogue on all the aspects of our economic cooperation,” she said.
“It is in the interest of our two countries to continue increasing the number of joint projects in the economic, scientific and cultural sectors. We should also continue working on the issues of our shared memory and history, which are often still painful. We must continue on this path, by writing the history and moving forward together,” she underlined.
In a reply to a question on the cooperation between the European Union and the countries of the southern shore of The Mediterranean, Guigou said that EU must “take into consideration the strategic priority of its southern neighbourhood, particularly the Maghreb.”
When asked about the cooperation between the two countries in the fight against terrorism, the French official said that terrorism, with its international branches, “can only be defeated through a close cooperation between all the countries,” adding that this cooperation “exists between France and Algeria and it is very satisfactory.”
