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SPS Evening party in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Saharawi Republic in the European Parliament’s seat 24.02.06
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Strasbourg, 24/02/2006 (SPS) An evening party in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Saharawi Republic was organised, on Thursday in the seat of the European Parliament, to the initiative of the European Parliamentarian, Mrs. Karin Scheele, President of the European Parliament’s intergroup, "Peace for the Saharawi people".
The evening was attended by many European Parliament’s members from the different Parliamentarian groups, delegated from Africa, Asia, Caraïbe ad Pacific, who were participating to the Parliamentarian meeting, ACP-European Union. They wanted to express their deep solidarity with the Saharawi people by their presence.
The party was marked by many interventions, including Mrs. Scheele’s, who expressed her satisfaction "of the registered progress realised by the Saharawi cause at the international level". She insisted on "Europe’s responsibilities in the tragedy Saharawi people are living".
"Morocco, who violated the rights of the Western Sahara, is repressing the defenceless Saharawi people, and is responsible of this tragedy that is taking place in the borders of Europe", she underlined, estimating that this country "can not and should not continue acting with impunity, forbidding the entry in the territory to European observers and Parliamentarians".
Speaking on behalf of South Africa, Mr. J.D. Sithole, President of the South African Delegation to the ACP-European Union, recalled "of the ties of solidarity between the Saharawi peoples and the South African, ties that were forged through the common struggle against racism and colonialism".
He also recalled that the Saharawi Republic was one of the first countries to support the ANC in its struggle against the Apartheid, estimating that Europe must "take into consideration the African Union’s opinion on the Western Sahara, and must support the legitimate struggle of the Saharawi people under the leadership of the Polisario Front".
"We must help the oppressed, the Saharawi people, and send a clear message to the oppressor, Morocco, whose salvation resides in the recognition of the Saharawi people’s rights and the end of the occupation of the Saharawi people", he said. (SPS)
010/090/110/TRD 241602 feb 05 SPS
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SPS Polisario Front will destroy a part of its stock of antipersonnel mines
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Chahid El Hafed, 24/02/2006 (SPS) Polisario Front is preparing to destroy, this Monday in Tifariti in the liberated territories of the Saharawi Republic, an important part of its antipersonnel mines conforming to the signature of the Geneva Call, Polisario signed last November in Geneva.
This initiative, which is undertaken in margin of the festivities marking the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Saharawi Republic, is another proof on the will of Polisario Front to participate actively to the eradication of the use of mines and to search a peaceful issue to the conflict.
"Polisario Front estimates that mines are unacceptable weapons whatever the conflict is. It is intolerable that, 14 years after the cease-fire between the two parties, the mines continue to kill land wound human beings and animals, and divide the Saharawi families", declared the Saharawi Minister of Defence, Mohamed Lamine Bouhali, during the ceremony of signature of the Geneva Call.
"The mines also constitute a serious obstacle to the future progress of our country", he noted, underlining that his country is "ready to cooperate in all domains of struggle against mines and to destroy our stocks of this weapon". He called the international community to "help us in this effort", knowing that some 525 persons living in the region, lost their one or more of the parts of their bodies because of mines, while 40 died since 2001.
"This decision to give up using this weapon, unilaterally adopted by the Polisario Front, despite of the current impasse in the process of peace and the threat of resuming to hostilities, is in deed a significant gesture", declared Mrs. Elisabeth Reusse-Decrey, President of the Geneva Call, last November 2005.
The Geneva Call is an international humanitarian constituted in 2000 by members of the International Campaign against antipersonnel mines, working for the engagement of the parties that did not sign the Ottawa Convention in the struggle against mines. It offers a complementary mechanism to the Convention, which allow these actors to adhere the norms of interdiction of mines signing the Act of Engagement. To this date, 27 movements signed the Geneva Call.
Rabat, which is not a signing party of the Ottawa Convention of 1997, installed millions mines in the region, all along the wall of send of more than 2.000 kilometres, which is also fortified with heavy weapons, trench, barbed wires and soldiers cutting the Western Sahara and its people in two parts from the north to the south. (SPS)
020/090/000/TRD 241705 Feb 06 SPS
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SPS Opening of an international conference on the decolonisation of the Western Sahara on Saturday
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Chahid El Hafed, 24/02/2006 (SPS) The decolonisation of the Western Sahara through a self-determination referendum for the Saharawi people and the respect of the human rights in the occupied territories will be the subjects of an international conference that will be organised on Saturday in the Saharawi refugee camps in margin of the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the Saharawi Republic, indicated the organisers.
More than 500 persons are invited, including Parliamentarians, political parties representatives, personalities from the world of culture, NGOs and Medias, to take part to this event that will be organised in the Wilaya of El Aaiun, it was indicated.
This initiative comes within the framework of a set of political activities that are planed for during the last meeting of the European Conference of Coordination of support to the Saharawi people (EUCOCO), which was held last November 2005 in Madrid, the organisers further stressed.
"We are expecting a large qualitative participation of the friends of the Saharawi people, who had never stopped supporting Saharawi just struggle for national freedom and independence", declared to SPS Mr. Khattri Addouh, Polisario Front’s Member in charge of political orientation.
"We will have here an international platform on which the different speakers will ask for the enforcement of the international law and of the UN’s resolution for the decolonisation of the Western Sahara, as well as the respect of the human rights, which are widely violated by the Moroccan colonial authorities in the occupied territories", he added.
This international conference will take place in margin of the festivities that mark the 30th anniversary of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, which started since February the 18th in Dakhla and will continue in the other Wilayas and in the liberated territories of Western Sahara. (SPS)
010/090/100/TRD 241700 feb 06 SPS
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SPS The President of the Republic receives an important Italian delegation
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Chahid El Hafed, 24/02/2005 (SPS) The President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, received, Thursday at the Presidency, an important Italian delegation composed of Parliamentarian, local officials, Mayors and members of the committees of solidarity with the Saharawi people, who are undertaking a visit to the Saharawi refugee camps this week.
"Your visit in this particular moment, which is characterised by the floods that stroke the camps of the Saharawi refugees is a sincere expression of the active solidarity of the Italian people with the Saharawi people", the President of the Republic underlined during a reception he offered on the honour of the Italian delegation composed of more than 100 persons.
Concerning the situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara and south of Morocco, the Head of the State vividly condemned the Moroccan authorities refusal to identify the responsibility of its police agents of the death of Martyr Lembarki Hamedi, as his family requests, before burying him.
"This is a new crime we have here and the umpteenth human rights violation", he deplored, asking for "support to the Saharawi citizens in the trials they are undergoing currently since the starting of the Saharawi popular uprising".
To Mr. Abdelaziz, "Pressures should absolutely be exercised upon the Moroccan Government, which denies its international engagements and is consequently trying another machination consisted in the autonomy". He further estimated that this attempt is an "alternative that aims at consecrating in advance the Moroccan fait accompli in the Western Sahara, to anticipate the will of the Saharawi people and deprive them from their right to freely elect their future".
On his side, Mr. Renato Romei, deputy from Florence, underlined that the Italian political forces are convinced of the fairness of the Saharawi cause. Talking on behalf of the delegation, he expressed the engagement to exercise pressures on the Italian Government and on the European Union’s Governments to "reconsider their relations with Morocco".
Mr. Romei considered as "improper that Rabat benefit from good relations with the European Union, while it is seriously violating human rights". (SPS)
010/090/100/TRD 241247 feb 05 SPS
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SAHARA
PRESS SERVICE