Morocco deplores Mauritanian official's statements on Sahara

Morocco has expressed amazement at the statements made by the secretary general of the Mauritanian Foreign Ministry who asserted during a meeting of the Organization of African Unity that the "Sahrawi Republic" was "a constituted state" and that "there was no need to reconsider the OAU stand regarding it."

"Morocco deplores this attitude and hopes that the statement reflects the personal viewpoint of the Mauritanian official and not the stand of the state of Mauritania," spokesman for the Moroccan government, Khalid Alioua, said at a press briefing in Rabat on Thursday.

"Morocco considers Mauritania as one of its privileged neighbors and hopes that the two countries' relations will remain good," Alioua told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Moroccan Cabinet.

The 69th session of the ministerial council of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earlier this week, debated the status of the self-proclaimed "Sahrawi Republic," as was decided by the OAU summit last June in Burkina Faso.

The African foreign ministers who discussed the question of whether or not to expel the "Sahrawi Republic" (SADR), decided to submit to the OAU summit scheduled next July in Algiers a report on the debates and an advisory opinion from a legal advisor to the OAU.

Senegalese Foreign Minister Jacques Baudin exacted that a juridical explanation be submitted to the heads of state along with the juridical advisor's opinion and the report on the debates. The juridical explanation would ask the following question: "Is it possible that 'a state' which is involved in a referendum process be already considered as 'a state', according to the legal meaning of the term?"

The admission of the SADR within the OAU in 1984 sparked the walk-out of founding member, Morocco.