Algeria Condemns Manipulation Of The United Nations Press Services

Algeria asked for clarifications on the statements of two websites about a petition on Western Sahara that was misrepresented by the United Nations Press Service, citing possible manipulation to remove this UN branch from its mission of informing international opinion sincerely.

“We are asking for publishing an explanation on the UN website and that the representative of the Department of Information should come before this committee to explain to us what happened”, Algeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohamed Basediki, said during the Fourth Committee’s discussion on decolonization.

“He has to explain to us about these mistakes” he said, adding that the official “must apologize” for the damage that is done to the concerned persons and warned: “Is it a mistake that is committed intentionally or unintentionally” considering that “if unintentionally this is not justified as well”.

UN press services are involved in the case of serious manipulation after the misrepresentation of the statements of the intervenes who expressed their support for the Sahara issue and went to the extent to assign pro-Morocco petition to two websites on the petition that they had not yet intervened.

After the distorted or fabricated statements and directed statements, a series of deviations that undermine its credibility as a media body of a multilateral organization such as the United Nations have accumulated for two days.

Assistant Ambassador noted that the evidence of complicity may have been that the press statement was withdrawn today from the United Nations website after the clarification by the Chairman of the Committee on Decolonization, Rafael Dario Ramirez Karreno, noting that the deviations of this service were numerous and frequent.

United Nations News Service was forced last Friday to withdraw its original report, which gave serious statements to the Sahrawi representative, Ahmed Boukhari on the Polisario Front and the Western Sahara peace fight.

“Today, we are not only confronted with a contradiction in the press statements, but also in front of the serious statements of the parties which sign the petition then attributed it to a legitimate representative of the people, while it has not yet been addressed for the matter”, he said.

After condemning these false and fabricated statements, the Ambassador Bassedsik made an official appeal to the UN Secretary-General to “ensure that discussions and statements within the services of the United Nations are properly reflected in the reports of the press service”.

Member States must ensure that this service did not deviate from its main task of providing reliable information to the media and to international public opinion.

The Assistant Ambassador stated that Algeria, which is acting as the coordinator of the Non-Aligned Countries on the revitalization of the General Assembly, had repeatedly raised the problem of the mismatch of press statements with the debates and statements within the United Nations.

Representative of Algeria noted that the Secretariat stated that the lack of users was the cause of these shortcomings; saying: “In the light of what happened today, we believe that this argument does not really reflect this reality”.