Algeria’s role in perpetuating conflict over Morocco’s Sahara highlighted in Caracas

Moroccan ambassador to the UN Omar Hilale asked Algeria to look in the mirror and acknowledge its role as the real party that has blocked any progress towards a political solution of the artificial conflict over the Sahara.

The diplomat made the remark while he was responding to the Algerian ambassador’s speech or diatribe in which he rehashed the Algerian position in support of separatism in southern Morocco, the Sahara.

“You talk about the Sahara as if you are not responsible. I have a question for you, Mr. Ambassador: the Arab Group that elected you as the representative of the Arab countries on the Security Council would have liked you to remain in New York to defend the Palestinian cause,” said Hilale.

“You have been here for three days just to read your speech on the Moroccan Sahara. You do not assume your responsibility for which the international community elected you to the Security Council, but you preferred to give priority to your national agenda, that of Algeria on the issue of the Moroccan Sahara,” the ambassador said.

Algeria has rejected to take part in the round table process as recommended by the UN security council.

“We are here because Algeria refused to return to the third round table of the political process. You talk about peace, but you refuse to assume your role as responsible for a situation that has lasted for half a century,” said Hilale.

“It is your country that is responsible for freezing efforts to resolve this regional dispute,” he added.

In response to the Algerian ambassador’s biased reference to the referendum, Hilale said: “You talked about a settlement plan and the referendum, but you forget that the Security Council buried it a quarter of a century ago. Your diplomacy, Mr. Ambassador, suffers from the dwarfism syndrome,” Hilale said.

“This means that Algeria stopped at 1991 with the settlement plan. It has not changed since then. Your country has not seen the world evolve. You didn’t see that the Berlin Wall fell. You didn’t see that there are 107 countries that support the Moroccan autonomy initiative. You pretend not to see the number of consulates open in the Moroccan cities of Laayoune and Dakhla,” he said.

Hilale added, “Algeria has not seen that the Security Council has moved from the settlement plan to the political solution, which requires negotiation between all parties. Nor has she seen the same resolutions that call on her to return to the round table process, and to which she persists in saying +NO+! While Algeria participated in the first two round tables, it says NO to the third, even though it was required by the Security Council.”

Reacting to the reference by his Algerian colleague to the alleged occupation of the Moroccan Sahara and the selective use of the right to self-determination, the ambassador said that “there is a people in Algeria, the Kabyle people who have been waiting for their self-determination, for more than 150 years and whom you terrorize, you imprison, you deprive of their freedom, and of their most legitimate rights.”

Abundantly exposing Algeria’s responsibility in the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara, Hilale continued his questioning of his Algerian counterpart by asking “who is blocking the UN political process? It is Algeria. Who harbours, arms, finances and diplomatically promotes a terrorist separatist movement? It is Algeria. Who proposed the partition of the Moroccan Sahara between the Kingdom and your terrorist separatist movement in 2002, to the former personal envoy James Baker? It is Algeria through the voice of its former president the late Abdelaziz Bouteflika.”