ALGIERS-PARIS (AFP-EJP)---Six days before President Nicolas Sarkozy's state visit in Algiers, the Algerian veterans’ minister has kicked up a storm with remarks about France’s "Jewish lobby" being behind his election.

The Algerian minister, Mohammed Cherif Abbas, was quoted in the Al Khabar daily on Monday as attributing Sarkozy’s rise to power to a powerful "Jewish lobby" that he said held sway over French industry.

He also linked this to Sarkozy’s roots -- the president’s maternal grandfather was Jewish. He declared: "Did you know that Israel released a postage stamp with Sarkozy’s effigy in the midst of the French electoral campaign?."

He added: "Why did Bernard Kouchner (the current Foreign Minister), a personality from the Left, decide to join the government? Not for personal beliefs. It was the result of a movement which is reflecting the advice of the real architects of Sarkozy’s rise to power, the Jewish lobby which has the monopoly over industry in France."

Kouchner's father is Jewish.

French foreign ministry spokesman Pascale Andreani hit back on Wednesday, expressing her astonishment at the minister’s comments.

Enrico Macias, French Jewish popular singer, who is of Algerian origin, renounced to travel with Sarkozy at the president's demand.

"We are surprised about these remarks that appeared in the press, which do not correspond to the climate of confidence and cooperation in which we are preparing the president’s state visit," she said.

Andreani tried to stress the positives ahead of Sarkozy’s December 3-5 visit, saying that relations "had never been so close."

Abbas, himself a veteran of Algeria’s 1954-1962 war of independence against France, did not deny making the comments but said Wednesday it had never been his intention to attack the image of a foreign head of state.

In the interview, Abbas also called the visit of Enrico Macias, a  French Jewish popular singer of Algerian origin, a "provocation."

Macias, who was due to accompany Sarkozy’s delegation during the trip in Algeria, finally gave up the visit at the president’s demand, according to the daily newspaper Le Figaro.

In the interview Abbas was also outspoken on the issue of France recognising the crimes it allegedly committed under its 1830-1962 colonisation of Algeria.

CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, expressed its "disgust" at the Algerian minister's "anti-Semitic comments which recall the myths conveyed by the Protocols of Elders of Zion." "Such comments stir up hatred against the Jews," it said.

"While France fails to recognise the crimes committed in Algeria, we can envisage neither reconciliation nor normalisation," he said.

Sarkozy has antagonised some in Algeria by saying France should no longer "repent" for its colonial past.

And relations between France and Algeria remain brittle after a friendship treaty was scrapped over the French refusal to meet Algerian demands for an apology for the "crimes" of colonisation.