During the proceedings of the 31st edition of the Arab Summit held on Wednesday in the Algerian capital, questions were asked to the Minister of Foreign Minister from the attending media outlets, and this was his response to The Independent and BBC News. About the question of how the minister evaluates the Moroccan participation in the Summit, the minister commented: “Regrettably, Morocco’s relations with Algeria bilateral relations remain tense, diplomatic relations are broken off, There is no open air space, dialogue. It is therefore natural for some tensions to arise at this summit towards the Moroccan delegation, which was resolved in the context of the discussion, including the issue of Morocco’s map. Bourita states that since the beginning of the summit’s work, Morocco had said that the slogan of the official summit should adhere to the official map adopted by the League because this is not a state-organized meeting and Morocco had come to Algeria after an invitation from the League of Arab States. Therefore, references, working rules, maps, and everything adopted by the Arab League should be respected.
Nasser Bourita added on: “what hurts us the most is the absence of Moroccan media, despite the presence of hundreds of foreign media professionals, except for a single journalist who carries out all the photography tasks, because the media have not been granted visas », Moreover, the Minister reported that AFP was prevented from coming to Moroccan delegation to conduct an interview. He commented that despite all that happened, it did not prevent them from overlooking what is more important with the Moroccan participation in this summit. »
One Response to the question of whether Algeria’s attitude towards Morocco was caused by Morocco’s relationship with Israel, The Moroccan Minister said: « if that was true, Algeria would have taken the same hostile stance from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan, which had older relations than Morocco’s. If that was true, Algeria would have an impartial diplomatic doctrine, But it didn’t happen with these countries. Algeria still maintains relations with all these countries, does Algeria closed the border since 1994 because of relations with Israel? »
He also stressed that this is Morocco’s sovereign decision, which has nothing to do with Moroccan-Algerian bilateral relations: “this is two neighboring countries with commonalities in common geography, humanely and historically. Morocco has an ambassador in Ramallah, and Palastine also has an Ambassador in Morocco, we still have normal relations with Palestine, is Algeria more Palestinian than the Palestinians?
During the Summit I conveyed the King’s regards to the President of the Palestinian Authority and his response has been positive, these arguments are therefore flimsy».
About the reason for the dispute between Morocco and Iran, the Minister underlined that: « the Arab situation is very critical, given the realities of the international context and external interventions in the region, which worsens the situation more. Morocco is against any foreign interference in states’ sovereignty. Morocco has no hostility with Iran, Morocco wants relations based on mutual respect, and Iran should not support separatist armed militias operating against Morocco and its sovereignty over its territory. Morocco is not alone in its position, as evidenced by the presence of the Arab Committee at the Summit to address Iran’s interventions in the Arab world, and resolutions condemning these interventions and expressing solidarity with a range of countries would be issued, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and others… Morocco is among those States ».
In response to the Algerian Foreign Minister, who said that Morocco was impeding joint Arab action by the King’s absence from the Summit and that the opportunity had been missed to try to resolve the outstanding files between the two countries, the Moroccan Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that: « the Algerian Minister’s statement was very surprising and requires some clarifications ».
« The first explanation is that since the arrival of the Moroccan delegation three days ago in the context of interaction with the available channels with the Algerian side -which are very limited- Given the broken diplomatic relations, Morocco has asked more than once about any bilateral arrangements and we have not received any confirmation from Algeria. The second explanation is that Algeria could have expressed this intention during the Summit, the Algerian envoy to Morocco did not talk about any arrangements that were made, during the three-day presence of the Moroccan delegation, no Algerian party contacted the Moroccan delegation to express its desire for joint actions ».
About the Algerian Minister’s statement that the President of Algeria intended to receive his Majesty in the Hall of Honour of the airport, he said: « We think that the Moroccan-Algerian bilateral relations should not be discussed in an airport Hall, because it requires preparations, arrangements, and Particular attention, and it would have been possible to work on those things if Morocco had been told in advance ».