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Saharawi President to François Hollande: position of France, an obstacle to peace and justice

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Bir Lehlou (liberated territories), April 2, 2013 (SPS) - “The position of France towards the Saharawi question is an obstacle to peace and security,” said Tuesday the President of the Republic and Secretary General of the Frente POLISARIO Mr. Mohamed Abdelaziz, noting that it was never too late to revise this position.


“We believe, however, that it is never too late for (France) to review a position which is now seen as an obstacle to the known interests of France, mainly those of peace and justice,” said President Mohamed Abdelaziz, in an open letter addressed to the French president Mr. François Hollande, on the eve of his visit to Morocco.


These values, he added, is a powerful incentive to ensure the cooperation and friendship of all nations and all peoples of our region.


“The lessons learned from the current events occurring in the neighboring Sahel confirm this truth,” stated the letter, published by the Algerian Newspaper of El-Watan.


The Saharawi President recalled that in 1975, the process of decolonization in Western Sahara, which had been defined by numerous UN resolutions and the International Court of Justice, “was brutally hijacked by an act of force contrary to International legality.”


“The position taken by France on these events frankly surprised and disappointed us, because we thought that it did not reflect the best traditions and republican values that made France a nation that inspires the struggle of peoples for justice and freedom, and the birthplace of the concept of human rights,” he lamented.


On other hand, the letter noted that Morocco has excessively operated this position that caused suffering to a small peaceful people, who aspires only to live free and sovereign in his homeland, in peace with all countries of the world.


More importantly, added Secretary General of the POLISARIO Front, this excessive operation has caused considerable damage to the entire region, which has not since then neither stability nor necessary harmony to meet the challenges of the present nor the future.


He felt, moreover, that the election of Mr. Holland to the presidency of the French Republic has “opened the way for France to play a decisive role in the search for a just and lasting peace in the Sahara Western, based on the results and efforts made by the UN.”


These efforts, added Mr. Abdelaziz, led the adoption of the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and to the need for this right to be exercised through a referendum supervised by the United Nations, in cooperation with the African Union (AU).


In this context, he assured France of the Saharawi political leadership’s cooperation in order to “engage in a serene reflection to facilitate for our Moroccan neighbors an honorable and beneficial way.”


President of SADR noted that given the doctrine of the UN and the AU position, the question of Western Sahara as a decolonization issue, is based on two fundamental principles.


“It is about the right to self-determination of peoples as well as colonial countries, and the principle of the inviolability of the borders inherited from the colonial period, which was dedicated by the OAU (Organization of African Unity) as a fundamental principle to guarantee the security of the continent,” he said.


“It is the validity and sustainability of these two principles that explain the fact that the claims of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara have not been recognized by any country in the world,” underlined the Secretary General of the POLISARIO Front.


Since 1964, Western Sahara has been considered by the UN as a non-autonomous territory. It is the last colony in Africa, occupied by Morocco since 1975. (SPS)


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