Intervening in reaction to the untimely, disrespectful and false declaration of the permanent representative of Algeria to the UN, Soufiane Mimoumi, during the work of the C24 regional seminar for the Caribbean which is being held in Dominica from 25 to 27 August 2021, the ambassador, Permanent Representative of Morocco to the UN, His Excellency Omar Hilale has flagged, supporting evidence, the historical, political, diplomatic, military and humanitarian responsibility of Algeria in the creation and maintenance of the artificial dispute around the Moroccan Sahara.
To this end, Ambassador Hilale reaffirmed that, contrary to the claims of his ambassador, “Algeria has never been a simple observer in the question of the Moroccan Sahara”. “Algeria has been involved in this dispute from the start.” To support his assertion, Ambassador Hilale read, in front of the audience, a letter sent, on November 19, 1975, by the former Algerian Ambassador to the United Nations, to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and distributed as an official document of the Security Council, in which the Algerian representative affirms in black and white that “in addition to Spain, in its capacity as a powerful administrator, the parties concerned and interested in the question of Western Sahara, are the Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania “. There was no so-called Polisario at the time, said Ambassador Hilale.
Ambassador Hilale also recalled that it was Algeria that created the “polisario”. “It was in an Algerian hotel that the so-called chimerical Sahrawi republic was created,” he said. Addressing the Algerian Ambassador: Who is funding the “polisario”? Who shelters it on its territory? Who arms him? Who equips it with missiles, tanks and other military vehicles landed at the port of Oran? Who issues diplomatic passports to him? Who pays for business class plane tickets and 5-star hotels? If not Algeria is doing it at the expense of its own population and its economic and social development.
Mr. Hilale abounded in the evidence overwhelming Algeria for its direct role in the problem of the Moroccan Sahara, denouncing the direct involvement of the Algerian army in attacks against Morocco, in support of the “polisario” in 1976, during two Amghala battles, during which hundreds of Algerian officers and soldiers were captured by the Royal Armed Forces, and subsequently handed over to the ICRC.
He also recalled the humanitarian drama, endured by hundreds of Moroccan detainees for more than two decades, in Algerian jails in Tindouf, in violation of the most elementary principles of international humanitarian law, and in defiance of the links family, blood, neighborhood and the common history of the two peoples.
The Moroccan diplomat also noted that it was on orders from Algeria that the “Polisario” denounced the cease-fire since last November, stressing that it was from Tindouf that the armed militias of the “Polisario” moved to block, for more than 3 weeks, the passage of Guergarate, between Morocco and Mauritania, before its liberation, once and for all, by the Royal Armed Forces.
