Algeria rebuffs Moroccan call
2008-03-23 09:23
Algiers - Algeria dismissed on Saturday a call by neighbour, Morocco, to re-open the land border after a 14-year closure, reiterating that the move should be part of an overall deal to improve long uneasy ties.
Algeria closed the frontier in 1994 after Morocco imposed visa requirements for Algerian nationals amid security tensions between the two countries of the north African Maghreb region.
Algerian leaders had repeatedly said the border would remain shut until the two governments agreed on a "package of deals" that included a solution to the Western Sahara conflict.
Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said: "The problem of frontier movement cannot be disassociated from a global approach to what we want to do in the Maghreb."
"It's not a question of building a Maghreb, where some win and others lose. The Maghreb is not limited to Morocco and Algeria. All the peoples who find themselves in this group should have their place."
North African people "are for a measure that is unitary, coherent and complementary".
Morocco loses $1.0bn annually
The Moroccan foreign ministry invited Algeria on Thursday to normalise links and re-open the border, and said it was willing to open a new page in relations.
The closure was a big barrier to commerce across the Maghreb region of 80 million people from Mauritania to Libya. Morocco had been losing up to $1.0bn a year in trade and tourism revenue because of the closure, said officials and economists.
Diplomats in Rabat said the rare Moroccan call to Algiers was part of a bid to try to end the deadlock over its dispute with the Polisario Front independence movement in Western Sahara.
Morocco took control of most of Western Sahara in 1975 after colonial power Spain withdrew, prompting a guerrilla war for independence that lasted until 1991 after the United Nations brokered a cease-fire and sent in peacekeepers.
The desert territory of 260 000 on Africa's Atlantic coast held phosphates, rich fisheries and potentially offshore oil.
Rabat was trying to persuade Polisario to accept its plan for Western Sahara to be an autonomous part of Morocco. Polisario proposed a referendum among ethnic Sahrawis that included an option of independence.