Par Taieb Dekkar
The EU-AU Summit, which opened on Thursday in Brussels, once more raises the question of the participation of a war criminal, leader of a terrorist gang, domiciled in the Tindouf region of Algeria.
If he had participated in the last Summit of Abidjan, on African territory, his presence in Brussels remains, on the other hand, all the same enigmatic. No country of the European Union recognizes the republic of the tents of Tindouf, like the United Nations, which should have provided an argument to the old continent, to oppose the presence of Brahim Ghali. Especially since the European Union has recently supported, through its representative at the United Nations, the autonomy proposed by the Kingdom for the settlement of the Moroccan Sahara issue, that it is pleading with European justice to the validity of the agricultural agreement between the Kingdom of Morocco and the European Union, which certain member countries of the Union
recognize autonomy as a means of settling this artificial conflict, created and maintained by the “New Algeria” and the old one.
That the European Commissioner responsible for foreign policy (Germany), the President of the European Council, Charles Michel (Berge), the President-in-Office of the European Union, Emmanuel Macron (France), allow entry into the precincts of the European Union, the president of a fictitious and virtual State, which is not a member of the United Nations, which does not have the attributes of a State (territory, sovereignty), which takes up residence in the tents in the Tindouf region, this has something to perplex us.
Certain African countries, in particular Egypt, had refused, in the year 2000, at the time of the first summit, the access to its territory of this alleged president, by reserving the participation only to the member countries of the United Nations.
The European Union, especially since the summit is held on the European territory of a country that does not recognize the SADR, might have adopted the Cairo format (summit held in 2000), which reserves participation to member countries of ONU. The European Union should have refused access to European territory for this intruder, who was the subject of legal proceedings for war crimes, in a European country.
The European Union had affirmed that it had not invited the president of the SADR to this summit! Has the African Union, which is chaired by the Senegalese president, extended the invitation to the SADR? This surprises us. Would member countries of the African Union need invitations to come to Brussels? First of all, no! Because at the summit in Abidjan, in Côte d’Ivoire, in November 2017, and under pressure from Algiers, a note from the presidency of the African Council had urged Côte d’Ivoire to guarantee “the participation of all member states”. This is the year during which the Kingdom had just rejoined the African Union (January 2017).
However, several international forums had refused the presence of the SADR, except in the case of certain African countries allied with Algeria, which imposed its participation.
However, the presence and participation of this leader of a terrorist gang, which is waging war in Morocco, and on which he reports every day, via his communications networks and via the Algerian press agency (APS DZ), since now more than a year, a war once morest a country bound to the European Union by an association agreement falls under the prerogatives and the responsibility of the European Union which, alone, might have opposed it and refused that it treads on European territory.
It must be admitted that the European Union’s position in this affair, contested moreover by certain MEPs, remains tinged with opacity and ambiguity. It is not enough to affirm that the Union had not invited this individual and that it does not recognize the SADR. It is necessary to provide proof of this on the ground, by prohibiting this intruder from treading the soil of the European Union, with an Algerian passport, made up, according to the circumstances, with a multiplicity of identities. The European Union’s decision is confusing. This situation is seen as a setback for European diplomacy. When will the SADR be expelled from the African Union! Morocco should get active there.
Journalist and writer
