“You talk about the Sahara as if you are not responsible. I have a question to ask you, Mr. Ambassador: the Arab Group which elected you to represent the Arab countries on the Security Council would have liked you to stay in New York to defend the Palestinian cause. You have been here for three days just to read your speech on the Moroccan Sahara.”
“You do not assume your responsibility for which the international community elected you to the Security Council, but you preferred to give priority to your national agenda, that of Algeria on the question of the Moroccan Sahara”.
Ambassador Hilale confronted his Algerian counterpart with his country’s obsessive fixation on the Moroccan Sahara, indicating that several issues are under examination by the C24, while he only addressed the Moroccan Sahara and did not deigned to say a single word on the other questions.
Responding to the claim of the Algerian ambassador on his country’s impatience for the settlement of the Sahara question, and the reasons why this question comes up every year at the C24, the Moroccan diplomat declared: “We are here because Algeria refused to return to the third round table of the political process. You talk about peace, but you refuse to assume your role as responsible for a situation that has persisted for half a century.”
And Mr. Hilale continued to address his Algerian colleague: “It is your country which is responsible for freezing efforts to resolve this regional dispute”.
In response to the Algerian ambassador’s biased reference to the referendum, Mr. Hilale asserted that “You talked about the settlement plan and the referendum, but you forget that the Security Council has buried it for a quarter of a century. Your diplomacy, Mr. Ambassador, suffers from dwarfism syndrome”.
“This means that Algeria stopped in 1991 with the settlement plan. It has not evolved since then. Your country has not seen the world evolve. You haven’t seen that the Berlin Wall has fallen. You have not seen that there are 107 countries which support the Moroccan autonomy initiative. You pretend not to see the number of consulates open in the Moroccan cities of Laâyoune and Dakhla. Algeria has not seen that the Security Council has moved from the settlement plan to the political solution, which requires negotiation between all parties. She has also not seen the same resolutions that call on her to return to the round table process, and to which she persists in saying +NO+! While Algeria participated in the first two round tables, it said NO to the third, although demanded by the Security Council,” launched Mr. Hilale.
Reacting to the reference by his Algerian colleague to the alleged occupation of the Moroccan Sahara and the selective mention of the right to self-determination, the ambassador indicated that “there is a people in Algeria, the Kabyle people who await their self-determination , for more than 150 years and you terrorize, imprison, deprive him of his freedom and his most legitimate rights.
Abundant in exposing Algeria’s responsibility in the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara, Mr. Hilale continued his questioning of his Algerian counterpart by asking “who is blocking the UN political process? This is Algeria. Who shelters, arms, finances and diplomatically promotes a terrorist separatist movement? This is Algeria. Who proposed the partition of the Moroccan Sahara between the Kingdom and your terrorist separatist movement in 2002, to former personal envoy James Baker? It is Algeria through the voice of its former president the late Abdelaziz Bouteflika”.