Al Jazeera video shows Bouteflika recognized the Sahara was Moroccan in 1975

Fez- Any person acquainted with Algeria’s rhetoric over the past three decades regarding the question of the Sahara would tell you that it has always been supportive of the Polisario and its “right” to establish an independent state in the Sahara.

She/ he would also tell you that Algeria supports the Polisario because the principle of self-determination is one of the tenets of its foreign policy, that Morocco annexed the Sahara in 1975 and is illegally occupying the territory and violating the human rights of the Saharawis.

Yet a video aired by Al Jazeera channel shows that the reality has not always been quite like that. Al Jazeera’s video shows a letter written in 1975 by Algeria’s current president Abdeliaziz Boutefliak, who was then his country’s foreign minister, where he states: “Algeria reiterates that it has no designs on the Sahara” but ” takes note with full satisfaction of the agreement between the two countries”.

In the same document, Bouteflika says that “Both countries are convinced of the need to improve the coordination of their action in order to put an end as soon as possible, to the Spanish occupation” of the Sahara.