Western Sahara: Algerians feel the heat over French power lines
Algerian-backed separatists declare their anger over the French foreign trade minister’s announcement that France’s Proparco could help fund projects in Morocco’s southern provinces, reports the Middle East online.
France intends to use the French Development Agency (AFD) to fund a project that links Dakhla and the Moroccan port city of Casablanca with a high-voltage power line via its private sector financing arm Proparco.
The news dealt a new blow to the Algerian-backed Polisario front separatists who called the move a “provocative” step on April 7th.
READ: Algeria denounces planned French investments in Western Sahara
The statement came after Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister, visited Morocco from April 3rd-5th.
During his visit, Riester posted to X that, “The renewal of French-Moroccan relations will involve new bridges between our private sectors.”
Riester’s statement is Frances’s recognition of Morocco’s Sovereignty over its Sahara, following years of icy relations between Rabat and Paris over the Western Sahara issue.
The Polisario’s Information ministry was seemingly displeased, stating that “this is a dangerous escalation of France’s hostile stance towards the Sahrawi people.” It added that France’s plan “represents explicit support for Morocco’s illegal occupation of parts of Western Sahara.”
READ: Is France a friend or foe to Morocco’s Sahara bid?
Under the leadership of King Mohammed VI, Morocco urged its country’s partners to “clarify” their position over Western Sahara and offer unequivocal support in August 2022.
“I would like to send a clear message to everyone: the Sahara issue is the lens through which Morocco looks at the world. It is the clear, simple benchmark whereby my country measures the sincerity of friendships and the efficiency of partnerships,” the Monarch said in a televised speech marking the Revolution of the King and the People.
“I, therefore, expect certain states among Morocco’s traditional partners as well as new ones, whose stances concerning the Moroccanness of the Sahara are ambiguous, to clarify their positions and reconsider them in a manner that leaves no room for doubt,” he added.
The Moroccan Monarch displayed his firm position on the Western Sahara dispute, repeatedly saying that he won’t accept any solution outside the framework of its proposed autonomy plan.
During his visit to Rabat in February, Stéphane Séjourné, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, reiterated his country’s “clear and constant” support for the Moroccan autonomy plan in the southern provinces. He clarified that it was time for France to move forward on this issue.
In 1975, morocco took over most of Western Sahara from colonial Spain, sparking a guerrilla war with the Polisario Front, saying the desert territory in the northwest of Africa belonged to it.
The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991 and sent in a mission to help organise a referendum on the future of the territory, but the sides have been deadlocked since.
Middle East Online.
