Sarkozy starts 3-day visit to Algeria (Roundup)

Dec 3, 2007, 18:13 GMT

Algiers - French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Algeria on Monday to start a three-day visit aimed at securing lucrative business contracts and smoothing ties still troubled by the two countries' colonial history and the bloody war that ended it.

Sarkozy immediately met his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika after his arrival at Algiers airport.

Sarkozy is accompanied by some 150 French entrepreneurs eager to profit from Algeria's economic recovery following a ten-year civil war in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.

His delegation also includes eight cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Justice Minister Radhida Dati, who is of Algerian-Moroccan ethnic background.

Contracts worth some 3.4 billion euros (5 billion dollars) are to be either signed or agreed during the visit, half of them in the energy sector.

In addition, the two countries are expected to formulate an agreement on closer cooperation in the field of nuclear energy.

The visit was preceded by controversial statements by the Algerian minister for war veterans, Mohammed Cherif Abbas, who referred to Sarkozy's distant Jewish heritage and said that his election as French president was engineered by 'the Jewish lobby.'

On Monday, Abbas was not part of the delegation of cabinet members to greet Sarkozy at the airport.

Sarkozy has angered many Algerians because of his refusal to apologize for France's colonial activities, saying in the past that colonialism was not all bad.

In an interview at the weekend with the Algerian news agency APS, Sarkozy said that there were 'wounds on both sides that have not yet healed,' but added that both countries must now 'turn towards the future.'

Instead of a previously-envisaged friendship treaty which would have addressed the issue of the colonial past and the war, France and Algeria now are to sign a partnership agreement.

Sarkozy is also pursuing his proposal of a Mediterranean region union with concrete projects in transportation and energy, water supplies and education.

But such a union would not replace the cooperation now in place between the European Union and North Africa, he told APS.