Morocco Rebukes Algeria at UN Security Council over Sahara Dispute

"The Secretary General of the Algerian Ministry has outrageously disrespected His Excellency the President of Sierra Leone, who wanted, in his capacity as President of the AU’s C10, to make the cause of Africa’s representativeness the flagship signature event of his country’s presidency of the Council. [...] Unfortunately, this was without counting on the slip-up of the Algerian representative, who distinguished himself by being the only one to address the issue of the Moroccan Sahara during this session," denounced Omar Hilale in his correspondence.

Reacting to the remarks of the Secretary General of the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lounes Magramane, the Moroccan diplomat recalled that neither history, nor international law, nor the reports of the UN Secretary General, nor the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, and even less the resolutions of the Security Council, designate the Moroccan Sahara as a so-called "colonized territory". Furthermore, he recalled that the decolonization of the Moroccan Sahara has been definitively settled thanks to the glorious Green March, whose fiftieth anniversary the Kingdom will celebrate next year, and that its reintegration into the motherland is also sealed by the UN, in accordance with its resolution 3458B of December 10, 1975, which took note of the Madrid Agreement, signed on November 14, 1975. This agreement has been deposited with the UN Secretary General since November 18, 1975, he pointed out.

Hilale also took care to specify that "the Moroccan Sahara is the subject of a political process aimed at reaching a realistic, pragmatic, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, under the auspices of the UN Secretary General and his Personal Envoy, within the exclusive framework of Chapter VI relating to the peaceful settlement of disputes". Without failing to refer the Algerian delegate to the UN Security Council resolutions concerning the Moroccan Sahara. "The Algerian delegate has deliberately omitted to mention that resolution 1514 clearly establishes that the right to self-determination must in no way compromise the territorial integrity of member states, nor apply to a part of a sovereign member state of the UN," said the Moroccan diplomat in his response letter. He continues: the Algerian delegate "also pretends to ignore resolution 1541, which outlines the different options for the implementation of 1514 on the principle of self-determination, including free association or integration. Subsequently, the General Assembly adopted its resolution 2625 of 1970, which added the option of ’any other political status freely decided’".

According to the explanations of the Moroccan ambassador, the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative is a modern, concrete and democratic form of exercise of the right to self-determination. "Moreover, this initiative enjoys broad and growing international support as the only and unique solution for the definitive settlement of this issue, including the recent, oh so symbolic, support of France as a permanent member of the Security Council," he adds. And to point out: while he claims the right to demand, out of context, the right to self-determination for the populations of the Saharan provinces of the Kingdom of Morocco, the Algerian official "nevertheless denies this right to the Kabyle people, who have lived under occupation for centuries." Hilale then calls on Algeria to assume "to the end its logic of support for the principle of self-determination in favor of all the peoples of the world", and to accept "to grant it to the Kabyle people".