French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez is scheduled to head to Algeria on Monday for a two-day visit in a renewed attempt to mend ties between the two countries.
After months of apparent hesitation, Mr Nunez decided to respond positively to an invitation from his Algerian counterpart Said Sayoud, French media reported. It will be Mr Nunez's first visit to the country.
The interior ministers are expected to discuss sensitive issues including the resumption of deportations of Algerian citizens to their homeland, as well as co-operation on counter-terrorism and the fight against drug trafficking.
Mr Nunez said: “I will be attending a working meeting to discuss all security issues of interest to France and Algeria. This includes drug trafficking, illegal immigration and many other topics that I will be discussing with my Algerian counterpart and our technical teams."
'Outrageous' position
The French delegation will feature the director general of the national police, Louis Laugier, the director general of the national gendarmerie, Hubert Bonneau, and the director general of internal security, Celine Berthon, daily newspaper Le Monde reported, quoting sources close to the Algerian presidency.
A meeting with Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune may also take place, the same sources said.
France also hopes Algeria will release a French journalist, Christophe Gleizes, who was arrested in 2024 and sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of glorifying terrorism while reporting on a football club in the region of Kabylie.
An elderly French-Algerian author, Boualem Sansal, who had been detained in Algeria under charges of undermining national unity, was freed in November after German mediation.
Mr Nunez's decision appears to have been precipitated by the unannounced visit of former candidate for the French presidency, Segolene Royal, to Algeria earlier this month in her capacity as head of the France-Algeria association.
After meeting Mr Gleizes in prison, Ms Royal returned to France pleading for renewed dialogue. “Algeria has changed enormously and many French officials, because they are politically exploiting this divide, refuse to understand that it is a country that invests and exports,” she said. “All countries are there to invest in this country, except France. It’s quite outrageous.”
A few days later, Mr Nunez said a visit to Algeria was "under preparation", without mentioning conditions he had previously listed. These included Algeria taking back its citizens living in France illegally.
Relations between Algeria and former colonial power France have long been difficult but reached a new low in the past two years. The countries have been locked in tit-for-tat decisions since French President Emmanuel Macron recognised Moroccan sovereignty over an area of the Sahara region.
This caused fury in Algiers, which has for five decades supported a movement in the region Rabat considers to be Moroccan territory and over which Morocco controls 80 per cent.
Mr Nunez will be the first French Cabinet minister to visit Algeria since Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot last April in a short-lived detente that lasted only a week.
Shortly after Mr Barrot's departure, Algeria expelled 12 French consulate employees working in Algiers because a French judge had ordered the arrest of an Algerian diplomat allegedly involved in the kidnapping of an Algerian in France. France responded by expelling the same number of Algerian agents and recalling its ambassador from Algiers.
Mr Nunez's predecessor Bruno Retailleau had pushed for a hard line on Algeria and called for the revocation of a 1968 agreement that lay the foundation for Algerian immigration to France. This has been viewed widely as unsuccessful and Mr Nunez, who was appointed last October, appears to have taken a more cautious approach to bilateral relations.
