The 'New Algeria' Accumulates Diplomatic Failures
Since coming to power in 2019, President Tebboune has made numerous trips and diplomatic initiatives. However, according to the Algerian press, in recent times, the country's diplomacy has mainly been marked by its failures.
Despite the enthusiastic efforts of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Algeria experienced a failure in August in its attempt to join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), as noted by the independent news site Twala.
Membership in this group was supposed to be a crowning achievement for Algerian diplomacy. However, the North African country didn't even appear on the list of supported candidates established by Russia and China, two countries on which Abdelmadjid Tebboune had placed great hopes. 'The New Algeria,' as Twala points out, is struggling to keep its promises.
On October 3, during a meeting with media executives, the president announced that he had definitively given up on the BRICS. This failure was described as a 'bérézina' (a disastrous defeat) by the opposition news site Le Matin d'Algérie.
'True specialists who understand the country's economic fabric and its many limitations were not surprised by this decision, except for the obedient press willing to do anything to please Tebboune,' the site comments, referring to Algeria's economic fragility.
"An Almost Solitary Approach" on the Ukraine Conflict
According to Twala, this is not the only issue on which the country's diplomacy has faced setbacks. When President Tebboune visited Moscow in mid-June, he announced Algerian mediation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. In reality, "Algeria found itself in an almost solitary approach" and failed to garner the support of European capitals and Kiev for this initiative. Since then, this "mediation" is no longer mentioned in official communications.
"The Ukrainian authorities do not forget that Algeria has significant interests with Russia... It is difficult to understand why, and we regret that there has been no support from Algeria, which claims to respect our sovereignty within our 1991 borders, at least in humanitarian terms, as has been provided by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates," said the Ukrainian charge d'affaires in Algiers, Oleksandr Kompaniiets."
"Algeria Contradicted by Nigerian Authorities
The Algerian President also proposed mediation in the crisis triggered by the coup in Niger, with the aim of preventing a military intervention by ECOWAS countries against the coup leaders. However, after announcing the "acceptance" of this mediation, the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was contradicted by the new Nigerian authorities.
"If a meeting took place between the foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of the 78th UN General Assembly, no official decision was made regarding the Algerian mediation initiative," reads a statement from the Nigerien transitional government.
Furthermore, on October 13, 2022, fourteen Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, gathered in Algiers to sign the Declaration of Algiers for national reconciliation. They pledged to carry out inter-Palestinian reconciliation and to hold legislative and presidential elections within a year. One year later, no progress has been made in this regard, and the ambition to unify Palestinian factions has not borne fruit, with resolutions left unresolved."
Translated from https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/geopolitique-l-algerie-nouvelle-accumule-les-echecs-diplomatiques?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&Echobox=1697040690-1
