Abdelilah Benkirane declares the Moroccan character of Eastern Sahara, currently under the authority of Algeria. “Touat, Tindouf and Bechar are Moroccan territories. Their inhabitants are Moroccans,” said yesterday the secretary general of the PJD during a meeting of the PJD devoted to the examination of the reform of the Family Code. “Before Algeria’s independence, the population of Eastern Sahara requested Moroccan passports from the kingdom’s embassy in Paris,” he stressed.
Benkirane recalled that France had proposed to Morocco to return the Eastern Sahara to it, but King Mohammed V had rejected this offer, preferring to address this issue with “the Algerian brothers”, once independent. The secretary general of the PJD explained the king’s refusal by the agreement concluded with Ferhat Abbas, then president of the provisional government of the Algerian republic (GPRA), a body created on September 19, 1958.
“But once independent, the Algerians refused to cede the Eastern Sahara to Morocco. Even though King Hassan II ceded this territory to Algeria, it was never ratified by the Moroccan Parliament. This question remains a subject of disagreement,” he said.
France occupied the Eastern Sahara in 1934, 104 years after the colonization of Algeria in 1830.
Morocco
