President Tebboune voices on strategic relations with Italy
By: Hana Saada
ALGIERS– “Algerian-Italian relations, which date back to the pre-independence period, are getting stronger and stronger,” declared the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, during a periodic interview with representatives of the national media, broadcast Friday evening.
In this regard, he recalled the good neighborliness and strategic partnership agreements linking the two friendly countries since independence.
Italy is “more than a strategic ally for Algeria,” and “did not abandon our country when it went through difficult circumstances,” President Abdelmadjid Tebboune told state TV in a previous interview, adding that Italy was the first European country to establish economic relations with Algeria.
“For over 65 years, even during the war of liberation (from France), Algeria has never had any problems, conflicts or misunderstandings with Italy,” he said.
“Whenever Algeria went through difficult circumstances, it always found Italy nearby, even during the national tragedy (the black decade of the 1990s),” he added.
Mr. Tebboune recalled that Alitalia, the former Italian national carrier now replaced by ITA Airways, was the only airline to operate flights to Algiers when all other commercial airlines suspended regular flights to his country following the hijacking of an Airbus in 1994.
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, paid, in January, a two-day working and friendship visit to Algeria. Georgia Meloni’s visit to Algeria is the third of its kind for an official of this level, i.e. the prime minister, in less than a year, after the two visits of the former MP, Mario Draghi, to Algeria, the first on April 11, 2022, and the second on July 18, 2022, on the occasion of the 4th high-level bilateral summit between the two countries.
According to data from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, trade exchanges between the two countries exceeded the level of 10 billion euros last year, of which more than 8 billion euros were Italian imports, mostly natural gas.
