India underscores unilateral character of invitation to BRICS summit in Johannesburg

India made it clear that invitations to the BRICS summit due on August 24 in Johannesburg are unilaterally made by the South African government.

In New Delhi, the Indian federation government has issued a statement saying that the invitations extended by South Africa for the BRICS/Africa meeting, due in Johannesburg, are based on a unilateral initiative.

On Sunday, Moroccan foreign minister Nasser Bourita spoke by phone with his Indian peer Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on bilateral relations and the strategic partnership set between the two countries.
The two ministers also discussed several regional and international issues of common interest, including the Kingdom’s relations with the BRICS, said a press release issued by the Moroccan foreign ministry.

Few days ago, an authorized source at Morocco’s foreign ministry said Rabat will not attend the event which South Africa seeks to derail from its goals to serve an “undeclared agenda.”

“It’s a meeting organized on the basis of a unilateral initiative by the South African government”, said the Foreign Ministry’s source, adding that Morocco has therefore assessed this invitation in the light of its strained bilateral relationship with this country.

South African diplomacy is known for its light, improvised and unpredictable management when it comes to organizing this kind of event, the source said.

The source also pointed to the deliberate and provocative breaches of protocol that marked Morocco’s invitation to this meeting. Worse still, many countries and entities appear to have been invited arbitrarily by the host country, without any real basis or prior consultation with the other member countries of the BRICS Group.

Actually, in a hostile move against Morocco’s territorial integrity, the South African government has invited some entities including separatist groups to the BRICS/Africa meeting without consulting the BRICS other member countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, which are among Morocco’s strategic partners.

The authorized source at the Moroccan foreign department denounced the South African move, which comes few weeks after the major diplomatic setback suffered by Algeria at the Russia-Africa Summit during which Moscow refused Polisario’s participation in the summit despite Algiers-Johannesburg intensive lobbying.
Morocco remains attached to a multilateralism that “should not be used to encourage division or interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign States, nor should they create precedents that could, one day or another, turn against their initiators,” underlined the diplomatic source.

Morocco has not applied to join the BRICS and will not attend the BRICS-Africa meeting in South Africa, the authorized diplomatic source said, adding that Rabat advocates a multilateralism that does not divide.
The source denied the news circulating in the media citing South Africa’s foreign minister who claimed that Morocco applied to join the grouping, formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

“Morocco does indeed maintain substantial and promising bilateral relations with the other four members of the Group, and is even linked to three of them by Strategic Partnership Agreements. However, the Kingdom has never formally applied for membership of the BRICS group,” the diplomatic source said.

Morocco’s future ties with the group are to be governed by the strategic directives of King Mohammed VI, the source said.