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Brussels,
21/03/2007(SPS) Morocco opted for the policy of the empty chair in
the conference organised on Tuesday at the European Parliament on
the Western Sahara, during which Mr. Jean Luc Onckelinks, person in
charge of Information of the UN to the European Union and Benelux,
recalled that the International Court of Justice never recognised to
Morocco any sovereignty over the Saharawi territories.
Invited to this encounter, the Ambassador of Morocco, Mr. Menouar
Alem, wanted to share the time the conference gave him to intervene
with representatives of the Moroccan royal consultative council for
Saharan affairs (CORCAS, which is not recognised by the
international community as representative of the Saharawi people) in
order to present the so-called autonomy plan prepared by Morocco.
The President of the EP’s delegation for the Maghreb, the Spanish
European Parliamentarian, Luisa Fernanda Rudi Ubeda, refused this
last minute change that intervened only three days before the
conference, arguing that it was agreed with the invited participants
that any modification in the programme has got to be presented to
the approval of all the other participants.
To maintain this activity of the European Parliament, the Bureau of
the delegation chose to present only the intervention of the UN’s
official, the representative of "the international legality", so as
to expose the history of the conflict.
On its part, the President of the European Parliament’s ad-hoc
delegation for the Western Sahara, the European Parliamentarian
Ioannis Kasoulides, addressed a message to the conference, recalling
that the parliament has got to maintain pressures on Morocco to
authorise the ad-hoc delegation to visit the occupied territories of
the Western Sahara so as to investigate on the repression exercised
by the Moroccan authorities on the peaceful demonstrations.
The conference, it should be recalled, was supposed to gather the
Saharawi Minister Delegated to Europe, Mr. Mohammed Sidati, in a
debate with the Ambassadors of Morocco, and of Algeria as well as a
UN’s representative in the person of the chargé of information for
the European Union.
Mauritania was also invited but it was not able to be present in
this conference, which was planed to be an occasion to present the
points of view of the different participants on the conflict of the
Western Sahara. (SPS)
020/090/700 211029 MAR 07 SPS
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