UN: Ambassador Hilale Says 'Sahara will Remain Moroccan until End of Time'

Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, Ambassador Omar Hilale, said on Tuesday before the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, that “the Sahara has been Moroccan since the dawn of time and will remain Moroccan until the end of time”.

Let it be clear to whoever wants to hear it, that Morocco’s efforts and its good will to put an end to this regional dispute have, as beginning and end, only this evidence rooted in the soul of the Moroccan people from Tangier to Lagouira “, Hilale told the members of the Committee.

The Moroccan identity of the Sahara is a historical, political, geographical, human, religious and legal evidence, the ambassador went on. History is stubborn and can in no way be reshaped according to the fallacious and variable interpretations of principles by some, the geopolitical interests of others and the hegemonic aims of some,” he said.

“Indeed, victim of a plural colonization in space as in time, the Kingdom of Morocco, country with a rich history which goes back to more than 12 centuries, had sometimes to fight heroically, sometimes to negotiate the hard way, to recover its territorial integrity. This process of recovery by negotiation of the different parts of the Kingdom of Morocco, was unique in the UN history of decolonization, because it began in 1955 and lasted until the recovery of the Moroccan Sahara in 1975,” Hilale recalled.

He pointed out that the Kingdom of Morocco is celebrating, this Friday, with pride and unshakeable conviction in its legitimate rights over its Southern Provinces, the 45th Anniversary of the glorious Green March.

“This sacred event, which allowed Morocco to peacefully recover its Saharan Provinces, constitutes a historical epic engraved in the memory of the Moroccan people. The Kingdom, in accordance with the resolutions of the General Assembly, negotiated and signed on November 14, 1975, with Spain, the Madrid Agreement by which it recovered its Saharan Provinces. This Agreement was submitted on November 18, 1975, to the Secretary General of the United Nations and ratified by the General Assembly in its resolution 3458B, of December 10, 1975 “, said the Ambassador.

“No offense to some, the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara is a question of the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Morocco, and not of decolonization,” the Moroccan diplomat stressed.

“Also, through the Madrid Agreement, the Kingdom has definitively put an end to the colonization of its Sahara and irrevocably sealed its return to the Motherland, in full respect with the UN Charter and international legality,” he said.