Macron overtakes Sánchez and defends “Moroccan sovereignty” over Western Sahara

Eduardo González The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has sent a message to the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, to officially announce his support for “Moroccan sovereignty” over Western Sahara and the Moroccan autonomy plan, considering, along the same lines as Spain, that it is “the only basis for achieving a fair, lasting and negotiated political solution, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council”. According to a statement from the Moroccan Royal Cabinet, Macron “believes that the present and future of Western Sahara are framed within Moroccan sovereignty.” “For France, autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the framework within which this issue must be resolved,” Macron’s message continues. “Our support for the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco in 2007 is clear and constant” and constitutes “now the only basis for achieving a fair, lasting and negotiated political solution, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council,” he adds. In his message, the French president guarantees the Alawite monarch “the intangibility of the French position on this issue of national security for the Kingdom” and assures that Paris “intends to act in accordance with this position both nationally and internationally.” “Today, an increasingly broad international consensus is emerging,” Macron recalls. France, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, is “fully playing its role in this regard in all the forums concerned”, in particular through Paris’ support for the efforts of the UN Secretary-General and his Personal Envoy, the French president said. “The time has come to move forward” and “I therefore encourage all parties to come together with a view to a political settlement, which is within reach”, he continued. “France will support Morocco in this process for the benefit of the local population”, he concluded. Macron’s message comes more than two years after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced in a letter to Mohamed VI, sent on March 14, 2022, Spain’s support for endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan “as the most serious, credible and realistic basis for the resolution of this dispute”. However, Sánchez’s message did not make any mention of “Moroccan sovereignty” over Western Sahara. This “historic turn”, which was immediately rejected by the rest of the parliamentary arc, including the government partners, allowed a very serious diplomatic crisis with Rabat to be overcome at the price of starting another one with Algeria, the main supplier of gas to Spain. It also resulted in the holding, on April 7, of a meeting in Rabat between the head of the Executive and the Moroccan King, in which the roadmap that would mark the new stage of bilateral relations was adopted. Algeria withdraws its ambassador Shortly after Macron's message was known, the Algerian government announced the withdrawal of its ambassador in Paris, Said Moussi, who was precisely the Algerian diplomatic representative in Spain when Algeria reacted in the same way to the similar turn of events in Madrid two years ago. "The French government ended up giving its frank and categorical support to the colonial fact imposed on Western Sahara. (this step, which) no other French government had previously thought necessary to take, the current one did with great frivolity and frivolity, without lucidly measuring all the possible repercussions," the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated in a statement, while recalling its ambassador for consultations. Algeria, which was informed of its decision by France last Thursday, believes that the French government is “disregarding international law”, is distancing itself from the “efforts” of the UN to complete the “decolonization” of Western Sahara and is “taking up the cause of the denial of the rights of the Sahrawi people to self-determination”.

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