Morocco’s Ambassador to the UN, Omar Hilale, revealed that his South African counterpart, Jerry Matthews Matjila, had addressed a correspondence to the international organization, indicating that the AU would have focused mainly on the issue of Western Sahara.
Morocco accuses South Africa of wanting to deceive the vigilance of the United Nations on the position of the African Union on the question relating to Western Sahara. The Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Sharif to the UN, Omar Hilale, revealed that his South African counterpart, Jerry Matthews Matjila, had addressed a correspondence to the international organization, indicating that the 14th extraordinary session of the Assembly of the The AU on “Silencing the Guns” would have focused mainly on the question of Western Sahara.
“I have the honor to transmit this document, containing the decisions of the 14th extraordinary session of the [AU] Assembly […] including a decision on the question of Western Sahara,” wrote Jerry Matthews Matjila, in his correspondence to the UN, December 29, 2020.
Rising against what it calls a distortion of the position of the African body, Morocco emphasizes that the title gives the impression that the question of Western Sahara was at the forefront of the meeting of the African Union, so that the territorial dispute was mentioned only once in the organization’s statement.
For Moroccan Ambassador to the UN Omar Hilale, “the reality is totally different”. “The South African approach to isolating the issue of the Moroccan Sahara reveals a dual attempt, at the procedural and substantive levels, to deceive the UN secretary general and the Security Council,” Hilale said.
Recall that Western Sahara is a territory of 266,000 kilometers in the North West of Africa, bordered by the Moroccan province of Tarfaya in the North, Algeria in the North East, Mauritania in the East and in the South. This territory, which is claimed by both Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), proclaimed by the Polisario Front in 1976, has become a real international political issue.
Recently, the United States recognized the sovereignty of Morocco over Western Sahara, in return for the normalization of relations between the Shereefian kingdom and Israel. This decision was described as a deal, and which eventually aroused the anger of Russia and South Africa.
