The Diplomat
Algeria’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf yesterday ruled out immediate changes in diplomatic and political relations with Spain, which he believes remain “stagnant” since the endorsement by Pedro Sánchez’s government of Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
Attaf, who has headed Algerian diplomacy since March, referred to this controversy for the first time in public yesterday, at a press conference in which he was asked about possible changes in relations after the last general elections.
The minister does not anticipate any rapprochement, as he considers that the reasons that led Algeria, in March 2022, to recall its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and to break the Treaty of Friendship with Spain a few months later, in June of the same year, are still valid, reports Europa Press.
The turning point was a letter sent by Sánchez to the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, in which he describes the autonomy plan for the former Spanish colony as “the most serious, credible and realistic basis” on which to negotiate, despite the fact that the Polisario Front, an ally of Algeria, continues to demand a referendum on self-determination.
On the economic front, exports to Algeria fell by 45.9% in 2022 compared to 2021, from 1.888 billion euros to 1.021 billion euros, a trend that continued at the start of 2023, according to sources at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
In the first three months of the year, only 30.2 million euros worth of exports had been made from Spain to this country, compared to 472.9 million in the same period in 2022, representing a fall of 93.6%, with a uniform impact on all sectors.
