Zambia Reiterates Support For Moroccan Rule, Discomforts Polisario And Its Algerian Sponsor

Rabat, June 1 : The Algerian regime, acting under the orders and whims of its generals, may have changed the senior clerks in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs, but it has not succeeded in curbing the momentum of the counter-offensive by Moroccan diplomacy in the long-running dispute over the Sahara.

Almost all the futile attempts by the Algerian authorities to impose the separatist theses of the clown Polisario front have been skilfully thwarted by Moroccan diplomats, who are constantly on the alert to ward off any malicious manoeuvre.

The latest target was the Speaker of the Zambian Parliament, Nelly Butete Kashumba Mutti, whose Algerian leaders tried to take advantage of her visit to Algeria last week to convince her, in vain, to persuade the government of her country to renounce its recognition of the Moroccan Sahara, but the Machiavellian plan of the desperate Algerian regime was foiled by Moroccan diplomacy.

As a reminder, during her stay in Algiers, Kashumba Mutti was received in turn by the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Upper House of the Algerian Parliament, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, all of whom failed to impose their position on the Sahara issue on their guest.

As proof of this, on Tuesday 30 May, Zambia reiterated its "unwavering support for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Morocco", a position that Zambian Foreign Minister Stanley Kasongo Kakubo expressed in Rabat in a joint press release issued at the end of his talks with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita. Minister Kakubo was carrying a message from the President of the Republic of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, to King Mohammed VI.

In the same press release, the Zambian government also reaffirmed, through its Head of Diplomacy, "its support for the Moroccan autonomy initiative presented by the Kingdom of Morocco in 2007", describing it as "the only credible and realistic solution for resolving this artificial dispute" surrounding the Moroccan Sahara.

Zambia, like some thirty other countries, opened a consulate general in Laâyoune in October 2020, thereby putting an end to the gesticulations of the Polisario leaders and their Algerian sponsors.

At the same time, Zambia definitively closed the page on the decades of its recognition of the "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)", to the great displeasure of South Africa, which is doing its utmost to dictate the lines of conduct for the diplomacy of the other member states of the Southern African Development Community.