ALGIERS: Algeria said yesterday it considers “unjustified” a decision by Morocco to recall its ambassador in response to comments by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika about disputed Western Sahara.
The diplomatic spat follows the latest barbed exchange between the North African neighbours whose decades-old rivalry centres on the disputed territory, annexed by Morocco in 1975 in a move never recognised by the international community.
“This is an unjustified decision, amounting to an unfortunate escalation based on spurious motives, and detrimental to the sovereignty of Algeria,” a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.
But despite its protest, Algiers said it would keep its diplomats in Morocco.
Rabat said on Wednesday that its decision to recall the ambassador followed “a growing number of provocative and hostile acts by Algeria towards the kingdom,” notably regarding “regional differences over the Moroccan Sahara.”
It highlighted a speech by Bouteflika at a meeting in Abuja on Monday in which he said an international mechanism to monitor human rights in Western Sahara was needed “more than ever”. He referred to “massive and systematic human rights violations that take place inside the occupied territories to suppress the peaceful struggle” of the Sahrawi people for freedom of expression and association.
AFP
