Sahara: Morocco’s King highlights growing international Community’s backing of Autonomy Plan
King Mohammed VI has underlined the growing international support to Morocco’s autonomy plan offered for the Sahara for a lasting resolution of this regional conflict.
“Moroccan Autonomy Initiative… is backed by the Security Council and the influential powers as the sole normal course of action for the settlement of this dispute”, said the Monarch in his nationwide address made on Saturday on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Green March.
The Monarch reiterated Morocco’s sincere commitment to cooperate with the UN chief within the framework of the relevant Security Council resolutions “to achieve a final solution based on the Autonomy Initiative.”
The latest Security Council resolutions have abandoned the “outdated, unrealistic approaches and proposals”, said the Sovereign making reference to the obsolete, impractical and undoable “self-determination referendum” the Polisario and the Algerian regime still cling to.
The latest UN resolutions have also insisted on the “actual participation of the real parties” concerned in this regional conflict and have irreversibly endorsed the political solution based on realism and consensus as the path forward, added the Monarch.
The Monarch also recalled that a number of African countries have opened consulates general in the cities of Laayoun and Dakhla, “thereby explicitly and unequivocally recognizing the Moroccanness of the Sahara.”
At the same time, the vast majority of the international community refuses to endorse the views of the other parties. As a result, the number of countries which do not recognize the fictitious entity now stands at 163, or 85% of UN Member States, underlined the Monarch in his speech.
Global powers also recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara through the conclusion of strategic and economic partnerships with the Kingdom including its southern provinces, which are an indivisible part of the Moroccan territory, said King Mohammed VI.
The Monarch rejected the Algeria-backed Polisario’s desperate move to undermine peace and stability in the region, through sending its armed militias to the southern crossing border point of Guerguarat in a bid to obstruct traffic flow between the North African Kingdom and its neighboring Mauritania.
“We categorically reject the unacceptable practices designed to disrupt the normal flow of traffic between Morocco and Mauritania” in the buffer zone.
He also voiced his complete rejection of any attempt to “change the legal and historical status of the territory east of the berm, or illegally exploit the region’s resources”.
“Morocco will not waver in its position. Nor will it be affected, in any way, by the useless provocations and desperate schemes of the other parties”, underlined the King, warning that the Kingdom will “respond, with the utmost firmness and resolve, to any practices or attempts designed to undermine the security and stability of its southern provinces”.
