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France, Algeria open new chapter in ties

By Vaiju Naravane

Paris March 3. The French President, Jacques Chirac, on a State visit to Algeria was given a hero's welcome in the former French colony with an estimated one million people crowding the streets to greet him. The bitterness that has marred Franco-Algerian relations in the past was nowhere evident and it appears that the hatchet has been well and truly buried by the two countries.

Algeria won independence in 1962 after a bloody liberation struggle that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, both French and Algerian. This is the highest ranking French visit to Algeria since the country became independent.

President Chirac who loves contact with the public was overjoyed by the reception. The 15 km stretch from the airport to the city was jammed with an estimated one million people — along the streets, in balconies, even dangling from lampposts and trees. In a typical gesture Mr. Chirac broke through his security cordon to join the crowds, shaking hands and exchanging greetings. The crowd chanted slogans against a war on Iraq.

On his continuing opposition to war on, Mr. Chirac said West Asia did not need "a new conflict with incalculable consequences''. While France wished the work of U.N. weapons inspectors to continue, the French leader remarked, the military pressure exerted by the U.S. and Britain had spurred Mr. Hussein to begin disarming. He underlined that the Iraqi leader had a long way to go and urged him to cooperate more actively with the U.N. "Iraq must do more, cooperate more, and do so more actively. We must keep up the strong pressure in order to achieve, together and peacefully, the goal on which we are agreed: to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,'' he said.

Mr. Chirac handed over the silver seal of the last ruler or Dey of Algiers, seized by France in 1830, to Algerian President Abdelziz Bouteflika. "The return of this symbol of sovereignty of the Algerian state seals the relations between our two countries,'' he said. The two leaders signed a joint declaration on improving relations. This is expected to be the first step towards signing a full treaty of friendship.

Mr. Chirac served in the French army during the Algerian war. In interviews he has often spoken of the visceral links of that time to the former French colony.

There are an estimated two million Algerians living in France. Young French nationals of Algerian descent have often rebelled against the ghettoising of their communities by the French.

The declaration signed in Algiers stresses that the Algerians living in France "have a rightful place in French society.'' Fatima Bakri, a young Frenchwoman of Algerian descent said: "This could be the start of a new relationship. France has tended to sweep under the carpet the ugly facts of the Algerian independence war.

The fact that the French army tortured and killed thousands of Algerian liberation fighters.

But slowly French society is coming to terms with its past misdeeds, just as the Algerians are admitting that they too killed and maimed many French in the struggle for freedom.

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