ALGIERS, July 18: French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Saturday proposed a defence partnership between Europe and three North African countries. Alliot-Marie made the proposal during five hours of wide-ranging talks here with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
The minister was in Algeria for the start of talks on a Franco-Algerian defence cooperation pact. She and Algerian officials also discussed fighting international terrorism.
The minister said she had put forward the idea of a meeting later this year between the three main Maghreb countries - Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia - and four southern European countries, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, preferably at defence minister level.
"There are countries in Europe which are sensitive to what is happening in the southern Mediterranean (...) and aware that there could be solidarity," she told a press conference.
Southern European countries "wish stronger relations, and I have proposed that we meet in the autumn in Paris with Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia (...) to address the prospects, and also a certain number of concrete actions that we could undertake together to bring the two shores of the western Mediterranean closer together."
It might be possible in the long run to organise joint military exercises and officer training, she suggested. "Stability in the Maghreb countries must be the first priority," said Alliot-Marie.
She said Bouteflika had given "agreement in principle" to the French proposal. Contacts between Paris and other Maghreb leaders suggested that the idea would also be favourably received by them, according to members of the French minister's visiting party here.
The visit is the first by a French defence minister to the vast former French colony since the end of its war of independence more than four decades ago. "We undertook a very wide-ranging review of bilateral relations and defence," Alliot-Marie said after talks with Bouteflika, who also holds Algeria's defence portfolio.
She spoke of a "true will towards partnership shown by both President Bouteflika and (French President Jacques) Chirac." "We must work together to fight terrorism," the minister earlier told a selection of Algerian personalities at a special conference at the Diplomatic Institute of International Relations here.
At that session, she referred to sometimes fraught bilateral relations between Algeria and France. "Our shared history has known some difficult times, moments of confrontation. Scars still exist," she told the assembly.
But she added: "The moment has come - not to forget, for we must never forget - but to turn the page, and to register our mutual relationship resolutely in the future."
When states were no longer able to properly administer their territory, other structures were ready to take their place, she warned: "Warlords, gang leaders, so-called charitable organizations bringing with them other potential dangers."
"Grey areas begin to appear in which the rule of law disappears, to be replaced by the law of the jungle," she said. This was what had happened in Afghanistan and Somalia. "Terrorism" had "struck notably in Africa and threatens your borders, in particular in the southern Sahara region."
She said Algeria and France had to get a message across that past differences needed to be transcended in order to achieve "a model of cooperation". This was vital because although terrorist acts were for many countries a new and painful phenomenon, it was "for us who have been victims of it, both Algeria and France, a tragedy."
Algeria has since 1992 been mired in a conflict pitting government forces against armed extremist groups, though violence has been declining since the latter half of last year.
The minister's visit marked the start of bilateral talks on a framework defence agreement which would include officer training, joint exercises, equipment and arms sales and possible data exchanges in the fight against terrorism.
France ruled Algeria for 132 years till independence in 1962 following a guerrilla war that claimed an estimated 100,000 French and one million Algerian lives. The two countries now maintain close relations, and a significant number of France's estimated five million Muslims come from Algeria. -AFP