horizons.dz.- The Saharawi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, affirmed that the Moroccan occupying regime intends, through its practices, to implement subversive external agendas aimed at peace and stability in the region, indicating that it also seeks to undermine the cohesion and unity of the countries and peoples of the African Union (AU).
The reaction of the Saharawi ministry follows a statement issued by the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the reception of the Saharawi President, Brahim Ghali, by his Tunisian counterpart, Kaïs Saïed, in the context of the 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 8), scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Tunis.
According to the Saharawi ministry, the reception of Mr Ghali by the Tunisian president is part of the “equal treatment of all heads of state and government and member delegations of the AU received at the international airport of Carthage”, reports the Saharawi News Agency (SPS). He added that “the new Moroccan communiqué was wrongly formulated in a language of arrogance and contempt for Tunisia, which acted as host country of the Conference and whose duty it is to welcome AU member countries, in accordance with the resolutions of the pan-African organisation and the protocols governing such events.”
“These (Moroccan) practices can only be justified by hidden agendas, especially related to the implementation of subversive external agendas aimed at peace and stability in the region. Since the Kingdom of Morocco’s accession to the AU, the Sahrawi Republic has constantly warned that the Moroccan regime seeks, above all, to undermine the cohesion and unity of the countries and peoples of the AU,” the same source added. “It seems that Morocco is only going backwards, resorting again to the policy of empty chairs adopted in the 80s and 90s of the last century. The increasingly isolated Moroccan occupation state is struggling to break the deadlock, especially in the face of the international community’s denial of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. It is also struggling in the face of the fact that the Sahrawi Republic constitutes an undeniable and irrevocable national, regional and international reality.
“Since its accession to the AU in 2017, the Kingdom of Morocco has participated alongside the Sahrawi Republic in all summits, conferences, seminars and activities of the Union, of which the Sahrawi Republic is a founding member,” after the Kingdom had, of course, signed the Constitutive Act of the AU and published its ratification in its official journal, the statement stresses.
Morocco also participated, like the Sahrawi Republic, in the fifth AU-EU summit held in Abidjan in 2017, “and during which the occupying Kingdom stood aside and accepted the AU’s decision on the right of member states to participate in all AU conferences and events.”
The Kingdom also participated in the 6th TICAD Conference in Mozambique in 2017, again in the presence of the Sahrawi delegation, and despite the aggressive behaviour shown by the Moroccan delegation, the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not issue any statement as it did against Tunisia.
The Saharawi President, together with his African counterparts, once again attended the 7th TICAD Conference in Yokohama (Japan) in August 2019 in the presence of a Moroccan delegation. However, the Kingdom did not protest or withdraw, nor did it recall its ambassador to Japan, the statement concludes.
