- Algeria suspended a cooperation agreement with Spain earlier this month, prompting a terse rebuke from Brussels.
- Spain expressed concern after a key Algerian banking association urged its members to restrict business ties.
- Algeria’s diplomatic mission to the European Union pooh-poohed the idea as a Spanish fabrication.
Spain accused Algeria on Thursday of blocking almost all bilateral trade operations, with the exception of its gas exports, Following a major diplomatic spat over disputed Western Sahara.
Algeria suspended a cooperation agreement with Spain earlier this month, prompting a terse rebuke from Brussels, which warned of the consequences of any “discriminatory treatment” of an EU member state.
At the time, Spain expressed concern after a key Algerian banking association urged its members to restrict business ties, but Algeria’s diplomatic mission to the European Union pooh-poohed the idea as a Spanish fabrication.
“The alleged measure by the (Algerian) government to stop ongoing transactions with a European partner… only exists in the minds of those who claim it and of those who hastened to stigmatise it,” it said at the time.
But on Thursday, Spain’s top diplomat confirmed there had been a de facto halt to trade ties.
“Despite Algerian statements saying these were malicious fantasies dreamt up by Spain, there is indeed a blocking of operations,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told RNE public radio.
His remarks came a day after Secretary of State for Trade Xiana Mendez told a Spanish parliamentary commission that Algeria had halted almost all foreign trade.
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