Morocco, armed with its national consensus, is determined to engage in the negotiations process and hopes to see other parties do the same thing for the sake of peace, stability, harmony in the Maghreb region and unity of the African continent, Morocco's permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Mohamed Loulichki, said before the UN 4th Committee.

    He added that the principle of self-determination has never been, neither in its conception, nor in its implementation, a tool to break up the unity and territorial integrity of States or a pretext to deprive the States of integral parts of their territory, while the contiguity, language, religion, tradition and culture show that these lands belong to the same Nation, as it is the case for the Moroccan Sahara.

    These same parameters enabled all the North African States, including Algeria, to keep the Saharan part of their national territory, he recalled.

    On the Moroccan autonomy initiative, he said that by submitting to the UNSC in 2007 this proposal, Morocco made sure to bestow on it national legitimacy and international recognition.

    He deplored the fact that Algeria and the polisario are maintaining the status quo and making vague attempts to revive approaches that have been proven unfeasible by the United Nations.

    “Their strategy, since Morocco presented the initiative, was to deflect the international community’s attention from the strategic goal which is finding a realistic and final political solution,” he said.