LONDON - President François Hollande on Thursday acknowledged the sufferings inflicted on Algeria during more than a century of French colonial rule in a statement that fell short of an apology.
In a speech to the Algerian Parliament, during a visit that coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the country's independence, Mr. Hollande spoke of the “profoundly unjust and brutal system†imposed on its people for 132 years.
He had signaled in advance, however, that he would offer neither repentance nor apologies as part of his mission to turn a new page in the often troubled relations between France and its former colony.
“I am not here to repent or apologize, I am here to tell the truth,†he told a news conference on Wednesday.
Half a century after the end of a brutal war of independence in which, by the most conservative estimates, 400,000 people lost their lives, the legacy of the conflict persists on both sides of the Mediterranean.
It even made its way into this year's French election campaign in which Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Hollande's conservative rival, was accused of chasing anti-immigration votes among the pieds noirs community, the French who fled Algeria at the time of independence.
Algerians have longed for an apology from successive French presidents and while many countries have apologized for their historical transgressions, France has never apologized for its actions in Algeria.
A poll this week by the CSA polling organizat ion for BFM TV found that only 13 percent of French support an apology. An additional 26 percent support an apology if Algeria apologizes for its atrocities during the war and its aftermath. But 35 percent of Frenchmen oppose an apology under any conditions.
(Read comments, in French, on the debate from readers of the magazine Le Point.)
The deep wounds of the war are still a part of contemporary politics and society in France. Not least of all because French North Africans, France's largest non-European minority community, continue to occupy an uneasy place in France today.
Nabila Ramdani, a Frenchwoman of Algerian descent, wrote bluntly in The Guardian this week, that “French-Algerians Are Still Second-class Citizens.â€
Many of Mr. Hollande's supporters are from the French-Algerian minority and it was a constituency that paid particular attention to his trip and his words.
What President Hollande did offer on Thursday was to make it easier for Algerians to make a new life in France. That probably means more to the thousands of unemployed youth hoping to emigrate than any number of expressions of French regret. (French-Algerians also have one of the highest unemployment rates in France.)
He promised to streamline a visa process that already grants access to more than 100,000 Algerians each year. The demand for visas should not become “an obstacle course, or worse still, a humiliation,†he told the Algerian parliament.
The Socialist president said it was in both countries' interests to ensure a flow of people. But, with a n apparent nod to anti-immigration sentiments at home, he said it was necessary to “manage†the flow of immigrants.
Algeria's Le Matin noted that of 160,000 visa applications last year, 15 percent were turned down.
As Mr. Hollande took a step on Thursday to heel old wounds, some commentators said there were also hard-headed calculations behind his initiative.
A dozen government ministers and senior executives from top French firms were with him on his trip, noted the iAfrica news Website, adding that France's economy sorely needed a boost and better ties with Algeria might help to provide it.
