ALGIERS: French President Francois Hollande yesterday acknowledged France’s “brutal” colonial rule over the Algerian people, without having to apologise, as he sought to launch a new era in ties on a two-day visit.
“Over 132 years, Algeria was subjected to a profoundly unjust and brutal system,” Hollande told the Algerian parliament on the final day of a landmark visit to the North African country, to applause from MPs.
“This system has a name: it is colonialism and I recognise the suffering that colonialism inflicted on the Algerian people,” he said.
In the audience were numerous mujahedeen veterans who fought in the vicious 1954-1962 war of independence from France that killed an estimated 1.5 million Algerians. The French president said after arriving in Algiers on Wednesday that he had not come to say sorry for the crimes committed during the colonial period, as some, including a dozen political parties, have demanded.
But he stressed the importance of recognising what happened as a way of beginning a new era in bilateral relations, saying nothing would come from “forgetfulness or denial”.
Hollande referred to specific atrocities, notably the massacre at Setif, where nationalist unrest that broke out at the end of World War II was brutally suppressed by French forces, leaving thousands dead. “On May 8, 1945, when the world triumphed over brutality, France forgot its universal values,” Hollande said.
The truth should also be spoken about how Algeria gained its independence, “in this war whose name was not mentioned in France for a long time.” “We have a duty to speak the truth about the violence, injustices, massacres and torture,” he said, adding that doing so strengthened French-Algerian ties.
ABU DHABI: The United Arab Emirates has shut down the Abu Dhabi office of the RAND Corporation, the American policy research institute, in the latest of several closures of foreign research institutions and think tanks in the Gulf Arab state this year.
The UAE, a major oil exporter and regional business hub, has not seen the unrest that has ousted autocratic Arab rulers elsewhere, but analysts and diplomats say the US ally is anxious to prevent any instability spreading to its turf.
In March, the UAE closed two international think-tanks promoting democracy overseas, Germany’s Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI), citing licensing irregularities. “We were asked by the authorities in Abu Dhabi to close the office,” Jeffrey Hiday, director at RAND’s office for media relations, told Reuters in an emailed statement.
He declined to comment on the reason for the closure. No UAE official was available for comment.
RAND has had a small representative office in Abu Dhabi since 2010, Hiday said, which “facilitated evidence-based research and analysis by RAND experts in such areas as education, public safety and environmental health”.
The clients for RAND research were emirate- and federal-level government institutions, he said.
BERLIN: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key figure who has long sought to bridge bitter divides in his war-scarred country, arrived in Germany yesterday for treatment after he suffered a stroke. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Talabani, 79, was in the country for medical care.Agencies
