Royal speech on 25th anniversary of Green March
Morocco, Politics, 11/7/2000

Morocco's King Mohammed VI delivered on Monday a speech on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Green march.

Here follows the translation of the full text of the royal speech:

"Praise be to God, Peace and Blessings be on the Prophet his Kin and Companions

Dear People,

On this memorable day, 25 years ago, our venerated father, His Majesty King Hassan II, may God rest his soul in peace, launched the glorious Green March.

This unique historic epic, stemming from the genius and the piercing perspicacity of our father, enabled Morocco to retrieve its spoiled southern provinces, in symbiosis between the Throne and the people, and thanks to unshakable faith, to the resort to civilized peaceful means and to international legality in order to recover the Moroccan Sahara.

While celebrating this cherished anniversary with pride and consideration, we recall the infallible loyalty of our faithful subjects in the southern provinces to our Majesty and our glorious Alaouite Throne, their sincere patriotic commitment to the unity of the Nation and their cohesion with their brethren in all the regions of the Kingdom, within renewed national unanimity and in an atmosphere of stability, security and peace.

The Green March was legitimate in its goals and peaceful in its means. Since its launching, Morocco has remained faithful to the peaceful path, respectful of international legality and attached to the civilized method of dialogue and moderation, ready to take constructive initiatives and showing proof of availability regarding all initiatives of good offices aimed at putting an end, once and for all, to this artificial conflict regarding the perfection of its territorial integrity.

When the international community realized that the tactics of the other party entangled the United Nations settlement plan in a deadlock, and in implementation of the Security Council resolution calling the concerned parties to propose means to find a final, lasting settlement to the artificial conflict, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, entrusted his personal envoy, Mr. James Baker, with exploring these means with the concerned parties.

Morocco positively responded, as usual, to this United Nations initiative and made, during the meeting held last June in London, detailed and studied proposals to handle the pending items of the United Nations plan.

Morocco also proposed to the other party, during the meeting held last September in Berlin, to hold a bold and constructive dialogue to study the possibility to reach a political solution within the Moroccan sovereignty and national territorial integrity, within the respect of the democratic principles and the activation of a large decentralization and regionalization. Such a concept is likely to help all the sons of the southern provinces to manage and develop their region and make it an invulnerable fortress and a strong pillar of the unified Moroccan state.

Although the minority, led astray, persists in adopting the intransigent positions of the enemies of our territorial integrity -against the will of the international community and its acting forces which highly valued Morocco's positive and constructive standpoints-- we are confident that our faithful subjects sequestered in Tindouf are aware that they can have no future, nor glory except in their homeland, Morocco, where they can live in dignity within the genuine democracy their brethren enjoy in all the parts of our Kingdom.

You perfectly know, dear people, the special solicitude we bestow on our southern provinces and on our devoted subjects there to compensate them for the years of sequestration and occupation and to give them the rank they deserve among the sons of their homeland.

The State made great efforts in all economic, social, educational and health sectors to develop these provinces, especially through employing the largest number of the sons of these regions and training the others to help them integrate in the regional and national economic fabric.

We are indeed determined to double efforts to mobilize all potentials to guarantee a prosperous and secure life to all our subjects in these provinces to make of them a pole of the economic and social wellbeing to which we aspire for all the regions of our Kingdom, and where the southern regions come first in our priorities.

No matter how we assess our achievements, we do not forget the ordeals of our faithful subjects who are sequestered in Tindouf, who are living in servitude and who put their lives at peril to join their homeland. We tell them that the time of relief is close and inevitable and that Morocco will spare no effort to lift the siege imposed on them. We also renew to the minority, led astray, the testament and pledge of our August father "the homeland is forgiving and merciful."

No matter how this issue will evolve, we -as your first servant and holder of the responsibility to protect your national and territorial integrity-renew to you, dear people, what we already confirmed in the Throne Speech, that no solution is feasible outside national unanimity and sovereignty and international legality.

In the same way we recovered our Sahara through popular mobilization during the glorious Green March with mobilized ranks, we will, with God's help, win the artificial conflict fabricated around this issue with more general national mobilization, whether at the level of the State and its institutions or at the level of all the political and unionist organizations and associations, that we call to double efforts, at the internal scale, and at the external scale, to firmly oppose the maneuvers and allegations by the enemies of our territorial integrity and to thoroughly explain the firm grounds of our stand within all international instances, whether official or popular.

Dear people,

The philosophy of the Green March, based on peace and legitimacy for the recovery of spoiled land, is the very philosophy guiding Morocco's stand towards a Pan-Arab cause, so well epitomized by the Moroccan people in the lofty, eloquent slogan: The Sahara is Moroccan, Palestine is Arab.

Morocco was a pioneer in the search of a peaceful, fair, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the basis of international legality, a solution enabling the recovery of all spoiled Arab territories and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State with Al-Quds Acharif as its capital.

Morocco had in this vein opened a liaison bureau with Israel as a channel meant to give momentum to the peace process. But the Israeli government's denial of international legality, its renouncing to the peace option and its persistence to resort to the logic of blatant aggression against the unarmed Palestinian people, prompt us to take the initiative to shut this bureau.

We made this decision in line with our peace and legitimacy-oriented stands to back our Palestinian brethren, shoulder our mission as Chairman of the Al-Quds Committee and lead the Israeli side to comply with the resolutions of international legality and to subscribe to the peace option, an option that we deem inevitable and to whose fulfillment we shall continue to endeavor.

Our stand vis-a-vis the Israeli government is not dictated by any racial, confessional or doctrinal fanaticism and does not mean either that we renounce our religious, historical, and constitutional responsibility in protecting the rights, freedoms and sacred values of our subjects of Jewish creed, like all the components of our nation that have throughout time coexisted in tolerance, conviviality, and mutual respect of sacred religious values.

We will never tolerate, in the frame of the state of the law that we warrant, the slightest attempts to the freedom, security, property and sacred values of our faithful subjects, whatever their creed. Everyone must know that we see to the preeminence of the law and legality and that anyone breaching them will be liable to legal punishments.

Dear People,

In a bid to consecrate harmony between the march of unification and democracy and in a bid to materialize the initiatives that we have announced in the Speech of the Throne Day and that are related to enlarging the scope of freedoms and making big strides towards the consolidation of the rule of the law, the government worked out draft bills reforming and updating the code of public freedom on the creation of associations, public rallies and the press.

This reform mainly seeks to consolidate the freedom of rallies and meetings and the freedom of speech, to ease administrative procedures and to reduce or drop imprisonment sentences for fines.

The reform equally seeks to institute new accurate regulations, guaranteeing transparency, honesty and legality in diversifying the internal and external financial resources of associations, consolidating the role of the judicial power in checking the legality of administrative decisions, on the basis of the law, preserving the sacredness of our national constants, while seeing to it that they be conform to our religious traditions and civilization and to international legislation in matters of human rights defense to ban racism, hatred, violence, and religious or ethnic discrimination or attempts to others' freedom.

We shall see to it that the laws on public freedoms be reformed, in line with our constitutional responsibility to guarantee the rights and freedom of citizens, groups and organizations, and our concern to preserve the balance between freedom and public order, between collective freedom and individual freedom.

Let us, dear people, continue to draw inspiration from the spirit of the Green March, while praying for the rest of the soul of the architect of this March and the father of the nation, may his soul rest in peace, as well as for the rest of the soul of all martyrs of the territorial integrity, in the first instance the members of our Royal Armed Forces, of the Royal Gendarmerie, of the National Security and the Auxiliary forces, proud as we are of the courage of our valiant officers and servicemen, who are stationed in the Sahara. We hail their courage and self-denial in fulfilling their sacred duty and shielding this precious part of our dear homeland from any aggression.

Let us be imbued with the virtues of the Green March in order to exert more efforts to carry on the marches of unity, democracy, and development that we are undertaking together to be at the rendez-vous of the major dates awaiting Morocco.

May God's Prayer, Mercy and Blessing be upon you."

Previous Stories:
  Cote d'Ivoire's president hails late King Hassan II's efforts for territorial integrity   (12/6/1999)
  Sahrawi expatriates in Germany call Moroccans to close ranks   (11/30/1999)
  Group of key Sahrawi personalities renew allegiance to king of Morocco   (11/25/1999)

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