After eight years of a South American-style dirty war in which more than 100,000 people have died, a handful of Algerian generals still control a trompe- l'oeil civilian government. Instead of democratisation, the country has known only rigged elections and cabinets handpicked by the military. Instead of economic liberalisation, the government has "privatised" the state-run economy by handing out monopolies to the generals' friends and relatives.
And yet, here was Mr Youssef Yousfi, the new Foreign Minister of Algeria, special emissary of the master illusionist himself, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in Paris on Tuesday and yesterday. Mr Yousfi is the first Algerian foreign minister to visit France in six years and he was received like a head of state by the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, and President Jacques Chirac.
"We want to be useful to our Algerian friends," the French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine cooed at a press conference following their three-hour lunch.
The two foreign ministers announced they are reactivating a 1967 military co-operation agreement because, in Mr Yousfi's words, "terrorism is a curse that concerns not only Algeria". There was no explanation of why, after portraying Islamist guerrillas as barbaric "terrorists" for so many years, the Algerian government granted unconditional amnesty to all members of the Islamic Salvation Army in December.
Privately, French officials still harbour grave suspicions about the activities of the Algerian intelligence services, repeatedly accused of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of French citizens in Algeria, the hijacking of an Air France airliner and Paris bombings. But France wants to turn the page, Mr Vedrine says. It is a question of national interest. While France lost time quibbling over Algeria's human rights record, US oil and gas companies were snapping up the big contracts in the country which holds the world's second largest gas reserves. Now Paris is determined to stop US commercial incursions into its zone of influence.
Algiers believes if it improves relations with Paris, the rest of the EU will follow. Mr Bouteflika wants symbolic gestures - the return of Air France to Algiers, French visas at pre-war levels for Algerians, reciprocal state visits by himself and Mr Chirac. These measures have been promised repeatedly, but the dates always slip by.
Algiers is relatively secure now, and residents say they are less frightened - but as disenchanted as ever. Large-scale massacres of civilians tapered off after up to 1,200 people were killed overnight at Relizane, western Algeria, in January 1998. Last Christmas Eve's machine-gunning of 28 bus passengers southwest of Algiers is typical of the continuing violence.
On January 23rd, the day Mr Yousfi reached Paris, 12 civilians were murdered at a fake road checkpoint at Ain Defla, 150km west of Algiers. The victims were travelling home from work at a centre for the handicapped.
"The situation is still very bad," said an Algeria analyst at the human rights group Amnesty International. "People are still disappearing every day. People are still being tortured, still being killed." But the scale has altered. Civilian deaths in the country of 30 million have fallen to 50 a week, compared to 50 a day two to three years ago. "The West thinks that this level of violence is perfectly acceptable," the analyst added bitterly.
A Madrid-based group of dissident Algerian army officers, MAOL, is complicating the government's public relations offensive through its website. MAOL claims 173,000 people had been killed by August 1998, that army headquarters deliberately "turned the strategy of chaos into a doctrine". Its spokesman, known as Col Ali, says more than half of the "terrorists" who turned themselves in under Mr Bouteflika's amnesty law were in fact government infiltrators.
This week, MAOL told the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, that it holds proof that 1,700 people "disappeared" by the security forces are buried in mass graves near Algiers.