Algeria refuses any political settlement to the Moroccan Sahara issue, diplomat

Algeria refuses and hinders any political settlement to the Moroccan Sahara issue, Mohamed Bennouna, Moroccan permanent representative to the United Nations told the national radio on Sunday night.

Bennouna said that Algeria shuts out all efforts aiming at resolving the Sahara issue - opposing Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario movement that claims the separation of the Moroccan Southern provinces - as well as efforts to build the Arab Maghreb Union (mustering Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya).

The Algerian stance is such that "its diplomacy focuses on one cause: The Sahara", noted the Moroccan diplomat adding Algeria declared it defends only one UN principle crippling thus for three decades the Arab Maghreb Union and the dialog between this region and the European Union. The defence of a single principle has rarely entailed such « collateral damages », said the Moroccan permanent representative to the United Nations.

Last Friday, in New York, Bennouna also told the fourth commission of the UN General Assembly, in charge of political issues and decolonisation, that Algeria is responsible for the blocking of the process of a political solution to the Moroccan Sahara and of the construction of the Arab Maghreb Union.