/View.info/ The strengthening of ties between our countries is due to common interests
The visit of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Teboun to Russia in June, who participated in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, provoked lively reactions in the Western press. The leaders of the two countries signed a declaration on a deep strategic partnership, which, in addition to energy, should affect military-technical and technological cooperation. The positive assessments of the state media of the North African country did not escape the attention of the author of the French Le Figaro “the exceptional relationship [с Русия]based on friendship’.
Russia is grateful to the Algerian side for its willingness to help and support Russian efforts to peacefully resolve the Ukrainian crisis, the Russian president said during a discussion at the plenary session of the forum in St. Petersburg on June 16. Answering the host’s question about what the leaders of the two countries would like to convey to the audience, A. Tebun announced his readiness to mediate efforts to resolve the armed conflict around Ukraine.
According to Vladimir Putin, during the talks held the previous day, his Algerian tete-a-tete counterpart showed great interest in the events in Ukraine, speaking “for peace”: “We are grateful to you, Mr. President, both for your position and for your willingness to help and support our efforts, including those for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine.”
Returning to his homeland, A. Tebun held telephone conversations with the presidents of Portugal and Italy, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Sergio Mattarella, and also sent his foreign minister, Ahmed Ataf, to European capitals. During the talks in Berlin, Rome and Belgrade, the head of Algerian diplomacy and his colleagues agreed to coordinate political and diplomatic efforts to achieve a cessation of hostilities.
It can be assumed that, in addition to gratitude to Moscow, which supported the ANDR as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and in BRICS, Algeria seeks a balanced relationship with Moscow, Kiev and the collective West, driven by the desire to increase its weight in the international arena.
At the same time, Algeria is actively arguing with Brussels about the “unequal”, according to the current authorities of the country, association agreement signed by the former president A. Bouteflika. It is possible that in the future, the Algerian negotiating platform will replace the mediation services of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with his recent ambiguous statements and high-profile steps such as the transfer of the leaders of Russia’s banned Azov to Kiev.
The active political rapprochement between the two countries is largely due to the typological similarity of the situation in the “near abroad” of Russia and Algeria and their desire to maximize the level of national and regional military-political security. These strategic factors also determine the lack of competition between the two countries on the European oil and gas market, where they are taking steps to coordinate efforts, including within the framework of OPEC +, which Vladimir Putin confirmed on June 15.
An illustrative example is Spain, which last June purchased the equivalent of 7,673 gigawatt hours of liquefied natural gas – 26.8% of the total volume of gas it purchased; in second place is only Algeria (21%), which ranks first in gas reserves in Africa (and third in oil reserves). In addition, the contract signed on July 9 between the Algerian company Sonatrach and the French group TotalEnergies will eventually increase oil and gas exports to France by almost one and a half times.
Energy supplies from Algeria, established since the mid-1960s, have been increasing since the second half of 2002, including through export pipelines through Tunisia and Morocco, as well as LNG. In early July, local media reported on the planned construction by Rosatom in Algeria of the country’s first nuclear power plant.
During the visit to Algiers in early July of the General Director of Rosatom Alexander Voronkov and his talks with the Minister of Energy and Mining of the ANDR Mohamed Arkab, current issues of bilateral cooperation were discussed, including the use of nuclear energy in a wide range of areas.
Apparently, a corresponding agreement is being prepared. According to the Algerian “Red Book” for 2011, there are 26 thousand tons of uranium ore on the territory of the republic, four experimental research reactors of small capacity are currently operating.
Military-technical cooperation is actively developing, including the recent delivery to Algeria of Russian Tor-M2K short-range anti-aircraft missile systems (SAMS). According to the CAMTO, in 2008-2017 Algeria received four divisions of the S-300 PMU-2 Favorit long-range air defense system (32 launchers), eight divisions of the Buk-M2E medium-range air defense system (48 launchers ), 38 anti-aircraft launchers missile-cannon complex “Pantsir-S1”. In addition, negotiations were underway for the delivery of the S-300BM “Antey-2500” and S-400 “Triumph” air defense systems.
As mentioned above, the positive dynamics contribute to a unified view of the current problems of regional security, unresolved disputes and conflicts. Thus, Algeria invariably supports the multi-year struggle for independence of the population of Western Sahara, ethnically close to the population of the Algerian part of the Sahara.
We remind you that most of the territory of the Western Sahara is occupied by the troops of the Kingdom of Morocco, with which Algeria currently has no diplomatic relations. After the end of Spanish colonial rule at the end of 1975 on the territory of this strategically important coastal region, rich in natural resources, the struggle of local guerrillas, created in the early 1970s with the help of Algeria and Libya, has continued for almost half a century .against the Moroccan invaders and their Western sponsors.
In 1976, the Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), but this did not stop the aggression from the north, and in the mid-1970s, Mauritanian troops also invaded SADR from the south, but were later withdrawn due to apparent discontent. of Rabat. However, the rebels are still resisting.
SADR is officially recognized by more than 70 countries, including 30 African ones. Since 1983, its unofficial representative office has also been located in Moscow. During the regular consultations of the Russian Foreign Ministry with representatives of the SADR in December 2022, Moscow’s support for the self-determination of Western Sahara in accordance with several UN resolutions was confirmed, which coincides with Algeria’s position.
The military-technical assistance provided to the Moroccan authorities by America, Spain and France in the conflict in Western Sahara was largely due to the handover from Rabat some 20 years ago of a long-term concession to Western companies of the colossal phosphorite reserves in the Bou-Kraa region in the northern part of the Western Sahara (there are some of these stocks in other regions of the SADR).
Their illegal, actually export production is growing – yet in terms of reserves of this raw material, SADR is in 4th place in the world. In addition, large and at the same time high-grade resources of copper, manganese, iron, uranium-thorium ores, gold, titanium and zinc have been explored in the Western Sahara; large reserves of oil and gas are assumed on the sea shelf.
Western colonial expansion also took particularly extreme forms in Algeria’s neighboring Libya, where the centralized socially oriented state of the M. Gaddafi era was deliberately turned into a conglomerate of rival ethno-tribal and territorial associations, enjoying the selfish support of outside powers.
In 2011, Algeria did not allow its territory to be used for NATO aggression against Libya, while refraining from sanctions against the West, because about 15% of the total energy consumption is still provided by Algerian oil and gas.
The North African country also well remembers the Soviet political and military-technical Soviet assistance to the Algerian rebels who, after 1955, achieved independence of the former colony from France seven years later. It should not be forgotten that it was the support from Moscow that led in 1966 to the liquidation of the French exclave in the south of Algeria, in the Regan-Hogar area, where Paris was testing nuclear and missile weapons.
It is obvious that all these facts and circumstances, and most importantly, the coincidence of the national interests of both countries, which are interested in a stable international situation and the normal functioning of international maritime communications, the security of which can only be ensured in the format of broad macro-regional alliances, predetermines the growing strategic partnership between Algeria and Russia.
Translation: ES
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