Rabat - Abdelilah Benkirane released a statement on Thursday saying King Mohammed VI’s speech during the opening ceremony of the Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Tuesday represented the point of view of not just himself, but the Moroccan government and its subjects as well.
Rabat – Abdelilah Benkirane released a statement on Thursday saying King Mohammed VI’s speech during the opening ceremony of the Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Tuesday represented the point of view of not just himself, but the Moroccan government and its subjects as well.
The statement obtained by Morocco World News detailed the head of government’s stance. “His majesty the King, as he spoke, was speaking by the tongue of his people in full and was representative of us all and the government,” he said.
“Today I want to confirm this sense and explain that we are one body behind the King, whether it comes to defending our southern provinces, or to confirm our position on terrorism or to defend against attempts to give a distorted image of our religion,” he added.
Morocco’s stances can be described as “clear” and “explicit” in all three issues, according to Benkirane.
Over the past year, the North African country’s intelligence services have contributed to international manhunts for the perpetrators of the “Islamic” State (ISIS) claimed attacks in Brussels and Paris, garnering the attention and praise of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other world leaders.
The king opened two institutes for the training of Imams, or mosque leaders, in the past year and signed agreements with several European and African countries to continue the education of Islamic preachers – both male and female – on the peaceful and tolerant attitudes of Islam in the institutes.
In regards to the Western Sahara issue, the kingdom proposed an autonomy plan for the territorial dispute in the region in 2007, which would grant self-governance to the Sahrawis on local issues under the sovereignty of the Moroccan flag. The plan has been supported as a legitimate path to the end of the dispute with the separatist Polisario Front by several countries in Africa and Europe, as well as the United States.
The national leader also referred to the neighboring Algerian state – known to support the Front – as Morocco’s “neighbors” and “brothers” and used the Arabic term for the phrase “God forbid” to describe an outbreak of war between the countries were the Western Sahara dispute to further distance the two states politically.
“Yesterday’s speech by the king, and the decisions that emerged from the summit offer a model of joint Arab action – a positive model – rather than models that radiate negative images, which radiate ruin and destruction,” Benkirane said. “The positive model offers images of hope in the future.”
Earlier this year, the Moroccan foreign ministry announced that it will cancel the Arab League summit that was set to be held in Marrakesh due to the “disunity” among Arab countries.
