SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 19. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The president of Nueva Canarias (NC), Román Rodríguez, has expressed “the most absolute rejection” of the change decided by the state president and general secretary of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, by supporting and “giving a letter of nature” after 46 years of conflict to Morocco’s plans for autonomy for Western Sahara.
The president of NC has denounced in a statement that this turn “contravenes international law, since Morocco does not have sovereignty over the territory, which has occupied Western Sahara by force since 1975 and violates the agreements of the United Nations Organization (UN). )”.
Román Rodríguez has reiterated the solidarity of NC, of all the Canarian institutions and the society of the Islands “with the just cause of the Saharawi people” and confirmed “a peaceful solution to this painful conflict, which has lasted more than 46 years and which It will only be possible with the holding of a self-determination referendum, guaranteeing respect for democracy and freedom”.
The leader of the progressive canaristas wanted to recall some of the numerous state and international judicial pronouncements in which it is ratified that the Sahara does not belong to Morocco, since the ruling of the International Court of Justice of 1975 and the 1991 plan accepted by the African country and sponsored by the United Nations, where the holding of the referendum is established in 1992.
Also the sentences of the National Court of 2014, of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in 2016, 2018 and 2021 against trade agreements signed between the EU and the Alawite kingdom inapplicable in Western Sahara and, among others, the repeated resolutions of the African Union in which it reaffirms the right of self-determination of the Saharawis.
Román Rodríguez stressed that the vast majority of countries do not recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over this people and, with this change in the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez “enters into a flagrant contradiction.” “On the one hand, it condemns the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin but, at the same time, it recognizes the occupation of the Saharawi territory and introduces a factor of instability in the energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Europe,” Rodríguez warned.
The also vice-president of the Government of the Canary Islands stated that Algerian gas “is an alternative to Russian, which is a leading country in North Africa and a key player in the conflict due to its support for the Saharawi people and with very deteriorated relations, non-existent in today, with the Alawite kingdom”.
In the ranks of Nueva Canarias, alarms have also been raised again in the face of the well-known annexationist claims of Morocco and the practice of the policy of faits accomplis. Rodríguez referred to the unilateral and illegal decision, which begins to be articulated with two laws published in the Alaouite Official Gazette at the end of March 2020, to expand its maritime border by occupying the territorial waters of the Archipelago and the Sahara. Although it lacks legal validity, Román Rodríguez maintained that it is “an attack on the interests of the Canary Islands.”
Along the same line of concern, he spoke out when recalling the serious context that the area is going through, which has been in a state of war since, in November 2020, the Alawite army broke the ceasefire.
The national deputy of NC Pedro Quevedo will sign a request for the appearance of Pedro Sánchez in the Congress of Deputies. “We do not believe that the socialists are going to find many allies in this unfair and unilateral position, with which they side with the occupier in a conflict that has dragged on for almost half a century,” ventured the NC president.
