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Join on Telegram Rabat – Morocco renewed its appeal to the UN, stressing the importance of Algeria’s full engagement in the UN-led mediation process — including future potential UN-moderated talks on Western Sahara.
The appeal followed the statement made by Algeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister Ramtane Lamamra at the UN General Assembly on Monday. In his address, Lamamra appealed to the UN for the resumption of the UN-led negotiations to find a solution to end the dispute.
Algeria’s appeal comes amid the Algerian regime’s reluctance to engage in the UN-assisted political process as the main party. Despite hosting, arming, and financing the separatist Polisario Front, Algeria continues to claim to be merely an observer in a dispute it says “exists only between Polisario and Morocco.”
The Algerian stance defies UN resolutions, including the latest Resolution 2602 of October 2021, which emphasizes that all the parties concerned by the Sahara dispute — namely Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and the Polisario Front — have to contribute to finding a compromise-based political solution to lingering Western Sahara question.
In a right-to-reply statement at the UN General Assembly last week, Morocco renewed its long-standing appeal to Algeria to “resume its place around the roundtables as it has already done during the two previous meetings.”
The Moroccan delegation to the UN General Assembly stressed that Algeria is exploiting the UN venue to “convey untruths on the question of the Moroccan Sahara.”
“Morocco recovered its Sahara in 1975, through negotiation, in a peaceful manner, and in accordance with the resolutions of the General Assembly and the UN Security Council,” the Moroccan delegation said.
Confronting Algeria’s allegations, the delegation argued that the Sahara question is on the Security Council agenda under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, on the peaceful settlement of disputes as a regional dispute and not as a matter of decolonization.
This reaffirms clearly that the Sahara “has always been Moroccan. It is Moroccan and it will remain so forever,” the delegation stressed, recalling the development projects initiated in southern provinces as part of Morocco’s New Development Model.
Morocco also emphasized the central and exclusive legitimacy of the UN Security Council to find a mutually acceptable solution to end the Sahara dispute.
This is not the first time Algeria has shirked its responsibility in the dispute over Western Sahara.
During the UN Personal Envoy for Western Sahara’s visit to Algeria earlier this month, FM Ramtane Lamamra said that his discussion with Staffan de Mistura was about the “prospects of consolidating the efforts of the UN for a resumption of direct negotiations between the two parties to the conflict.”
The Algerian foreign minister reiterated Algeria’s rejection of numerous calls from both the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council for all the four parties to the Sahara dispute to take part in the UN-moderated roundtables.
Despite its well-documented historical involvement in the Sahara dispute, as evidenced by its logistical, financial, military, and administrative backing of the Polisario Front, Algeria maintains that a solution to end the dispute should be just between Morocco and the separatist group.
