Algiers, 7 December 2020 (SPS) - Algeria reiterated Sunday its call to the need to “revive the political settlement process” of the conflict in Western Sahara, calling on the African Union (AU) to “fulfill its mission of preserving African peace and security” in the light of the serious developments that this issue has experienced recently.
In his speech at the 14th extraordinary session of the AU’s Heads of State and Government Conference on “Silencing guns in Africa,” held by videoconference, Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad said “our project to silence guns couldn’t be achieved without the eradication of colonialism’s remnants in Africa, in accordance with the Declaration of Heads of State and Government of May 2013 and of the Continental Agenda 2063, to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination through a free and fair referendum in Western Sahara.
Affirming that the “serious developments that the Sahrawi issue has experienced recently constitute a “real reason for concern for Algeria, because of an unprecedented inertia and an absence of “any settlement prospects,” the Prime minister underlined Algeria’s position on the “reviving of the political settlement process by speeding up the appointment of an UN personal envoy and the resumption of negotiations between the two parties to the conflict.”
In this respect, Djerad called on AU to “fulfill its mission of preserving African peace and security” in accordance with AU’s founding Act and Protocol on the creation of the African Peace and Security Council “in order to contribute to the reaching of a solution to this conflict, which has lasted too long.”
As part of Algeria’s consistent position on the imperative to put an end to conflicts in the continent and the world, Prime minister called in his speech to “speed up the definition and delimitation of borders between the States and make sure to rigorously respect AU’s principle on the respect of borders inherited at the independence” in order to avoid that these common borders between the African countries “turn into sources of conflicts and threats for the region’s security and stability. (SPS)
062/SPS/APS