Butaflika meets Chirac: I do not support death penalty for Saddam

The Algerian president Abdul Aziz Butaflika has commended bilateral relations with France. He said in Paris, which he had visited for a short time yesterday on the occasion of "Algeria's year in France", and met with the French President Jacque Chirac, that these relations are witnessing normalization and renewal.

Butaflika held short talks with Chirac at Orly airport, and then headed to Paris under strong security measures, and the two presidents had their lunch at Elysee palace.

Butaflika told journalists after the meeting that the two countries share friendship relations backed by effective coordination in all bilateral fields. He announced, replying to a question on the future of the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, that he does not support sentencing Saddam Huseein to death. He said "I belong to a culture that does not allow stabbing a camel with a knife after his collapse."

Butaflika delivered a lecture under the title "Culture and civilization means dialogue" at the Sorbonne university before a crowd of French and Algerian artists, intellectuals, and politicians. He said that this Algerian cultural manifestation in France which is strongly backed by Chirac "was a remarkable event because of its role in bringing closeness between the Algerian and French peoples."

He expressed gratitude for Chirac, whom he said was careful to normalize and renew relations between the two countries, after these relations witnessed tension in the 1990s following the violation of the election process in 1992. Butaflika said that "Algeria's year in France" was an opportunity to serve cooperation and consolidating relations.