Morocco’s Sahara Autonomy Plan Gains Support, Sparks Algerian Criticism at Anti-Terror Meeting

Morocco "endeavored to make the said gathering an event dedicated to Western Sahara," denounced the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement. According to the latter, this "concurrent sales exercise in which certain foreign participants have been drawn has clearly diverted the Conference from its announced purpose and transformed it into a pernicious attempt to give artificial topicality to a formula dead at its birth in 2007."

For Algerian diplomacy, this is an "obstinacy" that "highlighted the contradictions of interests of other participants that the Moroccan party aspires to pool in its vain quest for a distortion of the issue of Western Sahara which is and remains a decolonization issue fully engaging the United Nations." According to it, the fact that Moroccan diplomacy is chasing "the ghost of a false so-called autonomy solution and trying to pervert the global anti-terrorist struggle by putting it at the service of narrow and selfish calculations does not serve at all the legitimate objectives of the international community in this matter."

With these remarks, Algeria calls on the UN and the permanent members of the Security Council to "redouble their efforts to promote the effective decolonization of Western Sahara in transparency and in compliance with international law," adds the statement.