Algeria’s military chief, Major General Ahmed Gaid Salah, began a visit to France May 2 to meet with his French counterpart about developing military cooperation, the Algerian defense ministry said.

The visit, which follows French General Henry Bentegeat’s trip to Algeria in June 2003, “is part of plans to develop bilateral military cooperation and will allow both parties to look at matters of common interest”, according to the ministerial statement.

Relations between France and Algeria have been strained since February 2005 when the French government passed — later to repeal — a law requiring schools to stress the “positive role” of French colonialism. France ruled Algeria from 1830 to 1962.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika raised tensions recently by declaring that colonial France had committed a “genocide of Algerian identity.”

A trip to Algiers by French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy in April failed to revive plans for a “friendship treaty” between the two countries, which was to inaugurate a “privileged partnership.”

Three days after Douste-Blazy’s visit, Algerian Foreign Minister Mohammed Bedjaoui declared in Washington that France “did not carry the same weight” in Algeria as the United States — now the country’s number one client — and that there was “something in our spirit preventing us from going further” in cooperation with France, since “the colonial page” had “not yet fully been turned.”

However, Bouteflika insisted on May 1 that what might be called Algeria’s privileged partnership with the United States was not in any way directed against France.

In an interview published in the May issue of the Paris monthly “Arabies” Bouteflika said: “Our cooperation with the United States is developing. Clearly, it is not directed against any other State.”

”There is no connection between our relations with the United States, on the one hand, and with France, on the other”, he said, adding that the two were “different relationships with distinct objectives.”

Algerian military chief in France for military cooperation talks