President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Hydrocarbons law
I made a mistake
Wednesday Dec 27 2006.
President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika has acknowledged he made a mistake when promulgating a hydrocarbons law advantaging foreign oil company at the expense of the national oil company Sonatrach, but there was “no intention to buy Algeria’s resources”, he asserted.
In a speech he made before the cabinet staff and executives in Nations Palace, in Algiers, yesterday, President Bouteflika made an unprecedented acknowledgment about the controversial law, saying: “I issued hydrocarbons law and repealed it... sometimes we do the right thing, and other times we make mistakes, we are not unerring, but when we find out we are in a mist, we correct our errors”, Bouteflika stated. “Market opening does not mean selling strategic public sector, and everyone should know that we do not intend and are not ready to sell the country’s resources...”, he adds.
Raising dual nationality issue, President of the Republic criticized the Algerians who visit Algeria with a foreign passport, saying “there really is a moral crisis in our country, but that should not lead us to dual nationality”. “We can no more differ between who are Algerians and who are not... our consulates are visited by clusters of people with non-Algerian passports asking for visas to enter their own country while they do have Algerian passports... shame on those who give the cold shoulder to their fatherland”, he stressed.
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