Morocco's King Refuses To Receive Tunisia PM Youssef Chahed

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI refused to receive the Tunisian Prime Minister, Youssef Chahed, who visited Morocco on Sunday and Monday, because he refused to sign a document which alleges that Western Sahara is Moroccan.

Moroccan and Tunisian media quoted government sources as saying that Youssef Chahed left Morocco on Monday without meeting King Mohammed VI, although the meeting was on the agenda, .

Tunisian radio station “Mosaique FM” confirmed that the Tunisian delegation received “an urgent and unexpected apology from the Royal Office for canceling the meeting due to an emergency health problem that hit the Moroccan monarch, and said that the cancellation of the meeting was a surprise and a shock to the Tunisian delegation.”

The radio attributed the “real” reason for canceling the meeting to Tunisia’s refusal to sign the minutes of the agreement between the two countries, including a paragraph that states that the Tunisian state recognizes the Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara.

According to informed sources, the joint statement includes a paragraph which said that “Tunisia supports the brotherly Morocco in its control of all its territory, including Western Sahara”.

During his visit to Morocco, Youssef Chahed chaired, with his Moroccan counterpart Saad Eddin Othmani, the works of 19th session of the Tunisian-Moroccan Joint Committee and signed nine agreements, executive programs and a protocol of cooperation in a number of fields.

For its part, the German News Agency reported that “the Tunisian delegation demanded the cancellation of the paragraph on the dispute over Western Sahara as it is not a party to the dispute between Algeria and Morocco, which led to the subsequent cancellation of the scheduled meeting between Chahed and Mohammed VI”.