By Mourad Anouar
By Mourad Anouar
Morocco World News
Oklahoma City, April 24, 2012
A statement was released on Sunday by General Secretariat of the League of Arab States website, in which it was clarified that the statement attributed to the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil Arabi, about the so-called Saharawi people’s right to self-determination was misquoted.
The Arab League’s Secretary General was believed to have asserted that the so-called Saharawi people have to be allowed to exert their right to self-determination regarding the Sahara conflict.
“Given the fact that all peoples in the world are entitled to the right of self-determination, no double standard should be applied when dealing with the Saharawi people. The Saharawi people have the right to self-determination,” Mr. El Arabi was quoted by the Algerian newspaper El Khabar as saying.
The statement released by the Arab League confirmed that El Arabi’s answer to the question concerning the Sahara included all the data surrounding this issue in the framework of the United Nations, including the advisory opinion of the Court of international Court of Justice of 1975 and the UN resolutions and the efforts of the United Nations’ Special Envoy.
Arabi’s misquoted statement sent waves of shock and anger to Moroccan government and Moroccan alike, especially that the Arab League has always played no role in this issue. Immediately after the publication of the interview by El Khabar newspaper, the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs directed the Moroccan Ambassador to the Arab League in Egypt to inquire about the veracity of this unfortunate statement.
El Khabar newspaper’s inaccurate news is seen by my many observers as a psychological war on the part of the Algerian government to disturb the negotiations underway in the Security Council concerning the extension of the MINURSO’s mandate of the MINURSO until 30 April 2013.
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