Morocco proposes opening the borders and normalizing relations with Algeria

The Moroccan Foreign Minister, Taib Elfassi Elfihri, discussed with his Algerian counterpart, Mourad Medelci, during the twenty-eighth regular meeting of the council of the Arab Maghreb Union Foreign Ministers which was held Sunday evening in Libya.  

• He also sent a direct message containing consequences of closing the borders between the Algeria and Libya and its impact on the reality of the Arab Maghred Union.
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• The Moroccan Minister first expressed his country’s desire to the overcome the conflicts with Algeria in order to open the borders between the two countries, which were closed since 1994, as well as normalizing the bilateral relations “as soon as possible”, but he quickly moved to attack Algeria’s position towards the west Saharan case.
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• “We hope Morocco could normalize its conflicts with Algeria as soon as possible,” the Moroccan Foreign Minister said.
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• However, he did not speak about his country’s conflict with Algeria and the outstanding issues, particularly the cases of smuggling drugs and security cooperation as well as stopping colonialism in the Western Sahara, which extended since the beginning of the conflict that freezes the activities of the Maghreb Union.
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• The Moroccan Minister tried to convince people who are not following the Algerian-Moroccan conflict that Algeria refuses to resolve the west Saharan problem through using the United Nations saying; “We proposed, since more then three years, the resolution of the problem through the UN”.

• However, everyone knows that Algeria’s position towards this issue is always the same, respecting the decision to hold elections on self-determination of the West Saharans.
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• The decision was approved by Morocco in the beginning before changing its position through creating a new project by the king Mohammed VI who replaced the voting process with a new proposal that provides extensive autonomy for the (Moroccan) southern regions, but without Defence and Foreign Ministries.
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• The Moroccan proposal was rejected by the West Saharans who maintained the United Nations resolutions, particularly the right to self-determination, which was adopted by Algeria, on the basis of its efforts to fight colonialism after the cruel and hard French colonial period for more than a century.
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• In a Moroccan familiar position, Elfahri alluded to the possibly to swap the West Saharan problem with lifting the stalemate on the Arab Maghreb Union saying; “Our request is to avoid any direct impact on the bilateral relations or on the prospects for developing the Arab Maghreb Union”.
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• However, he avoided talking about the Algerian requests that consider the Saharan case part of many unresolved issues such as drug smuggling coming from Morocco as well as security cooperation.
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• Instead of overcoming these conflicts, the Moroccan Minister spoke about what the AMU should be; despite it is a result of a missing reconciliation because Morocco jumped on a reality that needs a stand.