In this interview, the special envoy in charge of the Sharoui file at the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Amar Belani returns to Morocco’s attempts to formalize its occupation of Western Sahara and to the last visit of the personal envoy of the UN SG In the region.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Morocco regularly welcomes the opening of consulates in the occupied Saharawi territories. For him, the number of consulates will eventually pave the way for the exclusion of SADR from the African Union. How do you assess these positions?
We had already qualified these consulates as “ghost consulates” because they were financed by the Moroccan authorities from the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of an indecent solicitation which shocked certain African countries which the minister in question continued with his sustained advances. .
Indeed, some of the States concerned by these openings of “consular posts” are not even able to pay their compulsory contributions to the international or regional organizations of which they are members.
That is to say that the trickery engineered by the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs will end up exploding like a vulgar balloon.
In fact, this wall of rejoicings which sports several plates of “consulates” on the facade of the same building and of which the minister is so proud will end up turning into a wall of lamentations when his ccef of the State will notice (finally? ) that this childish policy of arithmetic is a non-starter with regard to the status of the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara whose valiant people will end up exercising, come what may, their inalienable and imprescriptible right to self-determination, in accordance with international legality.
As for the chimerical objective aimed at the “exclusion” of the SADR from the African Union, Morocco has already tried in the past and it had miserably broken its teeth, especially since nothing in the founding texts of the The AU does not provide for the use of such an option.
Unless they want to blow up the continental organization and dance on its ashes, Morocco’s top officials should not let irresponsible arsonists play with fire.
During his recent visit to the region, the UN SG’s personal envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, was unable to visit the occupied Sahrawi towns, Laayoune and Dakhla, as planned. initially. Why couldn’t he do it?
The reasons are obvious and known. After having been very reluctant to organize this visit to the occupied Saharawi territories, the Moroccan authorities wanted to impose on Mr. de Mistura puppet interlocutors chosen arbitrarily by the occupying power; it is in fact settlers disguised as “elected” or vassal and satellite organizations like the famous CNDH whose degree of independence we could measure by reading its confusing and appalling report on the abject murder and the savage lynching of dozens of migrants in Nador.
Mr. De Mistura’s decision to postpone this trip, in such unacceptable and offensive conditions, rightly honors him and it will inevitably put pressure on Morocco, which is thus caught in the act of sabotaging the efforts of the personal envoy of the UN Secretary General.
Pressure from certain influential members of the Security Council should be able to be exerted at some point (particularly from those who succeeded “with difficulty in persuading” Morocco to finally accept, after five months , the appointment of Mr. Mistura to this position).
The press release made public following the talks between De Mistura and the Moroccan Foreign Minister evokes a solution based exclusively on the Moroccan autonomy initiative.
Did this closed position help the personal envoy of the UN SG in his efforts to find a solution to the Western Sahara conflict?
Indeed, it is a dogmatic and eminently obstructive position that is thought out and designed to perpetuate the current status quo.
This position, as expressed by the said statement, is a serious obstacle to the efforts of Mr. De Mistura because these famous constants of the position of the institutional Makhzen are quite simply the expression of an unacceptable ultimatum which leaves no space for negotiation and which neither the Polisario Front nor the international community will one day condone.
Indeed, all the Security Council resolutions call on the two parties (the Polisario Front and Morocco) to examine their respective proposals which have been on the United Nations table since 2007, and to negotiate in good faith and without preconditions; the fact of postulating the exclusivity of the autonomy initiative on the part of the occupying power which does not have, under international law
l, the attributes of sovereignty over a “separate and distinct” territory to unduly grant themselves the sovereign prerogative to propose autonomy, is a non-starter that will irreparably derail the efforts of the UN Secretary General and his personal envoy .
The consequences of such an impasse will have to be borne by the party that deliberately puts the spokes in the wheels of the UN facilitation mission and the latest statements by the former personal envoy, Ambassador Christopher Ross are enlightening in this regard.
Finally, this obsessive fixation on the “round tables” will never succeed in giving substance to the fantasy of the “regional conflict” as it is recognized that the question of Western Sahara is a question of decolonization, the process of which must be completed by the exercise the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence in accordance with international law.
The responsibility of the United Nations in this regard is fully and lastingly engaged.
The legal proceedings initiated before the Court of Justice of the European Union, with a view to the definitive cancellation of the villainous agreements on fishing and preferential tariffs for agricultural products, will definitively ruin, in May or June of the year next, the false calculations and expansionist aims of the Moroccan occupying power.
The same will apply with regard to the delimitation of the maritime space between Morocco and Spain because Morocco is not the coastal State of Western Sahara and therefore cannot, under any circumstances, have the legal capacity to delimit the borders of the Sahrawi maritime space.
Translated from TSA
