Moroccan ambassador lays bare Algerian FM’s contradictions before Non-Aligned Movement

Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Omar Hilale has laid bare the Algerian Foreign Minister’s manifest contradictions before the Non-Aligned Movement in Baku on Thursday, pointing out that Algeria is instrumentalizing the Movement’s principles it claims to promote in international forums at a time when it has persisted in violating them for decades.

Hilal’s remarks came in response to Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf’s speech at the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement’s Coordinating Bureau, currently taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, July 5-6. The Algerian official stressed his country’s attachment to the principles of the United Nations and the Movement, and drew the usual parallel between the Palestinian cause and the Moroccan Sahara issue.

The Moroccan diplomat asserted that “contrary to what the Algerian minister claims, his country uses these principles to harp on them and promote them in international fora, at a time when, unfortunately, it has persisted in systematically violating them for decades.”

“Yesterday, my country’s delegation heard a speech by a member of our Movement in which he called for the need to respect the principles of the United Nations and to adhere to the founding principles of the Non-Aligned Movement. These are the same principles that Morocco has never ceased to defend and to call for their respect without selectivity, in particular those relating to the respect for the territorial integrity of States, the peaceful settlement of disputes, neighborliness and non-interference in internal affairs,” stated the head of the Moroccan delegation taking part in the meeting.

The ambassador strongly denounced the conflation of the just Palestinian cause with the bogus regional conflict over the Moroccan Sahara, in order to legitimize a national agenda through an armed separatist group with connections to terrorist networks and international organized crime, as documented in numerous international reports.

Hilale also reminded the Algerian official, whose country persists in comparing the question of Palestine to that of the Moroccan Sahara, that “he has committed a crime against the cause of the Arab and Islamic Ummah, by explicitly ignoring the clear demand of the honorable head of Palestinian diplomacy in 2015, concerning the categorical rejection by the State of Palestine of all erroneous and suspect comparisons between the Sahara issue and the Palestinian cause.”

He maintained that “anyone who boasts of defending the Palestinian cause must first at least respect the sovereign decision of the State of Palestine, instead of rehashing obsolete, deceitful and outdated untruths.”

Hilale also called on the brotherly country to comply with Security Council resolutions, and to stop shirking its responsibility as the main party in the political process to put an end to the artificial dispute in North Africa, saying: “Let his country’s position be consistent with its declaration of intent, and an opportunity to act on its appeal to the Non-Aligned Movement, not a pompous slogan from a broken record!”

The diplomat reaffirmed “Morocco’s total commitment to finding a definitive political solution to the regional conflict over the Moroccan Sahara, based on the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the one and only solution to this artificial conflict within the framework of the Kingdom’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty, which were definitively achieved with the return, in 1975 and until the end of time, of the Sahara to its Morocco.”

He also affirmed that Morocco, as underlined in the Royal Speech on the 46th anniversary of the Green March, renews its full support for the efforts of the UN Secretary General and his Personal Envoy to relaunch the round table process with the same participants and the same format, with a view to reaching a realistic and lasting political solution, on the basis of compromise and in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions, particularly Resolution 2654.