Remarkable Harmony In The Positions Of Algeria And Washington On Western Sahara Issue

An unusual dynamic between Algeria and the United States of America, embodying a clear desire in Washington, under the administration of President Joe Biden, to correct what was spoiled by the tweet of former US President Donald Trump in his last days, which brought relations between the two countries in a state of coldness, due to his sudden bias towards the Moroccan proposal regarding the Western Sahara issue.
The new American approach is embodied in the successive visits and continuous contacts between officials of the two countries for months, the most recent of which was the US Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy R. Sherman, on Tuesday with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Ataf, focused on bilateral relations, as well as the issue of Western Sahara, which is considered a criterion for the strength of Algerian-American relations, based on the rule that Western Sahara is a strategic depth for Algerian national security.
And according to a statement circulated by the first deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Fidan Patel: “Assistant Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman spoke with Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ataf on Tuesday to congratulate him on his assumption of office.”
The deputy secretary, according to the statement, “emphasized the importance of the relationship between the United States and Algeria in addressing a wide range of shared challenges.”
“Both Sherman and Foreign Minister Ahmed Ataf discussed efforts to promote stability in the region, including support for the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura in advancing a lasting and dignified political solution to the conflict in Western Sahara,” the statement said.
This call comes less than a week after the Secretary General of the Algerian Foreign Ministry, Ammar Bélani, received for the second time in two months the American Ambassador to the country, Elizabeth Moore Aubin, in a meeting in which, according to a statement issued by the Algerian Foreign Ministry, the issue of Western Sahara was among those discussed. Among other things, the statement said that the talks covered “the latest developments on the Sahrawi issue at the diplomatic and judicial levels.
The meeting also dealt with the efforts of the Personal Envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, to “re-launch the process of political negotiations between the two parties to the conflict, namely the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, in good faith and without preconditions, in accordance with the relevant United Nations resolutions,” in a strict affirmation. For the American side, Algeria will not accept in any way the imposition of the so-called “autonomy plan” put forth by the Moroccan Makhzen regime in 2007.
This development did not take place in the relations between Algeria and Washington, except after the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, confirmed last March that the United States had not changed its position on Western Sahara, stressing his country’s support for the international efforts to resolve the issue based on a political solution, and it was remarkable that in all the positions issued by the US administration during the term of the current president, he ignored the tweet of the former president, Donald Trump, in which he spoke about Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over the occupied Western Sahara.