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“The request from Algerian authorities to clean up the sites is obviously important and completely legitimate,” declared the director of the Armaments Observatory, an independent French organization specialized in expertise and documentation related to, among other things, nuclear tests, in an interview with APS.

Last December, the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, during an address to the Nation before both chambers of Parliament, had called on France to clean up the sites contaminated by nuclear explosions. “Don’t give us money, but come clean up the sites that you have contaminated,” he emphasized.

In January, the Minister of Environment and Quality of Life, Nadjiba Djilali, indicated that colonial France, responsible for an environmental catastrophe in the South of the country, must “fully assume its historical, moral and legal responsibilities in the elimination of this radioactive waste.”

In this regard, Patrice Bouveret deplored the fact that French authorities are not taking responsibility for their actions.

“The main obstacle is the lack of political will from French authorities to concretely assume the consequences of their nuclear policy,” he said.

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