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Rabat – Morocco’s United Nations representative, Yasser Halfaoui, denounced Algeria’s “relentlessness” on the question of the Western Sahara during the UN debates on information-related issues. The Algerian delegation brought up the subject despite it not appearing on the debate agenda.
During a debate on information at the Fourth UN Commission in New York on October 25, the Algerian delegation, led by its deputy ambassador Mohammed Bessedik, filed a request to dig up a 1975 report on the Sahara dispute, which was digitized but not accessible to the public.
Halfaoui expressed his puzzlement, not only at Algeria’s “malicious selectivity,” but also by the nature of the demand, which is “contrary to the UN practice and regulations.” The Moroccan representative explained that the content of UN digital archives is “the sole responsibility of the UN Secretariat and not of Algeria or any other Member State.”
The Moroccan delegate went on to say that Morocco could also have asked for the publication of UN documents reflecting the degree of involvement of Algeria in the Sahara issue, “notably the Algerian proposal to partition the territory of the Western Sahara made to the former Personal Envoy James Baker, duly recorded in a report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council.”
“Morocco does not follow this logic, and respects the theme of the debate and the mandate of the Department of Information,” Halfaoui said, according to the Maghreb Press Agency (MAP).
In response to the “misrepresentations” made by the Algerian representative on the Green March, Halfaoui reminded the audience of the “glorious and historic glorious nature of this march,” through which Morocco recovered its southern provinces. He reminded the members of the United Nations the ordeal of the people of Tindouf in Algeria, “who are not refugees but are sequestered,” Halfaoui stated.
He also stressed that the question of the Western Sahara was an issue of “completion of the territorial integrity of the kingdom and not a matter of decolonization.” Challenge the “observer status” brandished by Algeria, Halfaoui stated that “this country that created the Polisario finances and mobilizes its diplomatic and military apparatus against Morocco.”
Halfaoui noted that Algeria’s attitude is additional proof that it is, in its own right, “part of the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara.”
