{"id":5533,"date":"2022-08-27T21:54:16","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T15:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/?p=5533"},"modified":"2022-08-27T21:54:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T15:54:16","slug":"tunisia-recalls-morocco-envoy-in-western-sahara-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/photonews\/2022\/08\/27\/news\/5533\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisia recalls Morocco envoy in Western Sahara row"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Western Sahara’s “Polisario front” independence movement leader Brahim Ghali (C-L) attends the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Tunisia (AFP).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TUNIS, Broadcasting news corporation : Tunisia said Saturday it would recall its ambassador from Morocco for consultations, a day after the kingdom did the same in response to Tunisia\u2019s president hosting the Polisario movement\u2019s head. The Polisario wants an independent state in the Western Sahara, a vast stretch of mineral-rich desert which Morocco sees as a sovereign part of its own territory. Tunisian President Kais Saied had on Friday hosted Polisario chief Brahim Ghali who arrived to attend the Japanese-African investment conference TICAD. In response to what it called a \u201chostile\u201d and \u201cunnecessarily provocative\u201d act, Morocco immediately withdrew its Tunis ambassador for consultations and canceled its own participation in the high-profile conference. On Saturday the Tunisian Foreign Ministry voiced its \u201csurprise\u201d at Morocco\u2019s reaction. \u201cTunisia has maintained its total neutrality on the Western Sahara issue in line with international law,\u201d it said in a statement. \u201cThis position will not change until the concerned parties find a peaceful solution acceptable to all.\u201d
\nSaied spent much of Friday welcoming African leaders arriving for the TICAD conference, including Ghali who is also president of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Morocco accused Tunisia of \u201cunilaterally\u201d inviting the Polisario chief \u201cagainst the advice of Japan and in violation of the process of preparation and established rules.\u201d But Tunisia said Saturday the African Union had issued a direct invitation to the SADR, a member state, to join the conference, noting that it had attended previous such gatherings \u2014 alongside Morocco. The move came as French President Emmanuel Macron visited Morocco\u2019s arch-rival and Polisario backer Algeria for a three-day visit aimed at healing ties with the former French colony. It is not the first time that Ghali\u2019s travels have sparked Moroccan anger. In April 2021, he headed to Spain to be treated for Covid-19, sparking a year-long diplomatic row between Spain and the North African kingdom. That only ended after Madrid dropped its decades-long stance of neutrality over the Western Sahara \u2014 a former Spanish colony \u2014 and backed a Moroccan plan for limited self-rule there. The Polisario had waged an armed struggle before agreeing to a cease-fire in 1991 on the promise of a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination, which has never happened. The African Union\u2019s chairman Macky Sall, in a speech to TICAD delegates on Saturday, said he \u201cregretted the absence of Morocco.\u201d \u201cWe hope that this problem will find a solution for the smooth running of our partnership\u201d between Africa and Japan, he said. NEWS COLLECTED FROM ARAB NEWS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TUNIS, Broadcasting news corporation : Tunisia said Saturday it would recall its ambassador from Morocco for consultations, a day after the kingdom did the same in response to Tunisia\u2019s president hosting the Polisario movement\u2019s head. The Polisario wants an independent state in the Western Sahara, a vast stretch of mineral-rich desert which Morocco sees as …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photonews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5535,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions\/5535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}