The rag had been burning for several months.
Algeria announced on Wednesday June 8 that it was suspending its cooperation treaty with Spain after the kingdom announced its support for Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
An announcement breaking with the traditional position of neutrality of the former Spanish colonizing power.
Believing that the new position of the Spanish authorities was in "violation of their legal, moral and political obligations", Algeria "decided to proceed with the immediate suspension of the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation which it concluded on October 8, 2002 with the Kingdom of Spain and which framed the development of relations between the two countries", indicated the Presidency of the Republic.
"These same authorities who bear responsibility for an unjustifiable reversal of their position since the announcements of March 18, 2022 by which the current Spanish government gave its full support to the illegal and illegitimate formula of internal autonomy advocated by the occupying power , are working to promote a colonial fait accompli by using fallacious arguments", specifies a press release from the APS press agency.
On March 18, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared that with these announcements the "head of government (Pedro Sanchez, editor's note) broke everything".
The conflict in this vast desert area, bordered by waters full of fish and with a rich mining subsoil, considered a "non-autonomous territory" by the UN, has for decades pitted Morocco against the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers. .
(AFP)
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