Algeria condemned a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara on Tuesday, after Paris accepted Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed area, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The huge desert territory is a former Spanish colony mostly administered by Morocco but long claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who called her visit “historic,” launched a French cultural mission in the territory’s capital, Laayoune, alongside Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid.
According to a statement released by Algeria’s foreign ministry on Tuesday, February 18, 2025, the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonisation process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” the statement said.
Dati’s travel, the first by a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” according to the statement.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has stationed a peacekeeping operation there since 1991, with the declared goal of organising a referendum on the territory’s future.
However, Rabat has consistently rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead preferring autonomy within Morocco.
France’s attitude toward Western Sahara has been uncertain in recent years, affecting its relationship with Morocco.
However, in July, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” for resolving the Western Sahara problem.
Algeria has endorsed the separatist Polisario Front and will terminate diplomatic ties with Rabat in 2021, a year after Morocco normalised relations with Israel under a deal that granted the US recognition of its annexation of Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council urged parties to “resume negotiations” to find a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara conflict.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front announced the end of a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan soldiers were dispatched to the far south of the area to clear independence supporters who were blocking the only road to Mauritania.
