Fresh from “relaunching” Europe, President Sarkozy took his deal-making skills to Algeria today to promote an ambitious plan for a Mediterranean Union.

Mr Sarkozy’s scheme for a cross-Mediterranean tie-up similar to the European Union’s common market has hit a wall of scepticism on both sides of the sea and put up backs in Ankara, Beirut and Brussels in particular.

Morocco cancelled Mr Sarkozy’s planned stop in Rabat on Thursday. The official reason was a “scheduling problem” but officials said King Mohammed VI was offended that the French leader planned to stay only a couple of hours and only after first visiting Algiers and Tunis.

The President’s first trip beyond Europe is being staged in the whirlwind style that he has applied to fixing French problems and to brokering a treaty to salvage the defunct EU constitution. With his trademark salesmanship, Mr Sarkozy claims personal credit for putting the EU back on the rails at last month’s Brussels summit.

He aims to apply his energy to cutting through the tangle of disputes and historic grievances that that have bedevilled attempts to link the north and south of the Mediterranean. “The future of Europe and France will play out, perhaps above all, in the Mediterranean," his spokesman said.

President Bouteflika warmly embraced Mr Sarkozy at Algiers airport. However Algeria has made no secret of its doubts about France’s scheme, which seeks to replace the “Barcelona process”, a stumbling 12-year-old effort to create a north-south bridge across the Mediterranean. EU officials who have devoted 20 billion euros to the Euro-Med project take a dim view of the French plan to replace it.

Mr Sarkozy believes that promoting the prosperity of the Maghreb nations of North Africa is in Europe’s vital interest because of the need to stem the pressure of immigration.

Algeria is worried by Mr Sarkozy’s determination to curb family immigration from its former colonies. He was characteristically blunt today when he told Algeria: “The equation is simple. The more we are convinced that the Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians to whom we give visas will return home, the more generous we will be in granting visas.” An attempt by Jacques Chirac, his predecessor, to forge a “friendship treaty” with Algeria foundered over French refusal to atone for the “crimes” of its colonial rule there.

Mr Sarkozy said that he had no intention of apologising and it was time to put aside the eight-year war of independence from France that ended in 1962 after the deaths of more than 1.5 million Algerians.

“There has been darkness, suffering and injustice during the 132 years that France spent in Algeria, but not just that,” he told Algerian reporters. “I am in favour of recognizing the facts, but not for repenting. Repentance is a religious notion that does not have its place in state-to-state relations.”

Mr Sarkozy’s Mediterranean scheme has been badly received in Turkey, where it is seen as a ploy for furthering his desire to block Turkish entry to the European Union. In Lebanon, Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim pposition movement, yesterday accused him of kowtowing to “Zionists”. Mr Sarkozy had defended Israel and orged Hezbollah to halt “its terrorist actions”.

Doubters in Europe wonder how Mr Sarkozy would be able to persuade the southern Mediterranean neighbours to bury their rivalry and come together as Europe’s nations did after the Second World War. Algeria and Morocco have, for example, been in dispute for the past two decades over the western Sahara.

Le Monde newspaper commented today: “The idea of a Mediterranean Union is a handsome project, but is it not also a mirage?”

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