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Rahabi: what is behind Mohamed VI's "extended hand" to Algeria

Mohamed VI has again reached out to Algeria, in a speech delivered Saturday evening on the occasion of the Throne Day. A speech that recalls, in its passage devoted to Algeria, the one he read last year on the same occasion.

The Moroccan king's speech includes a plea for appeasement with Algeria, this time with a direct appeal to the Algerian presidency to "work hand in hand" to establish "normal" relations.

 In Algiers, however, it is not forgotten that his equally honeyed words in 2021 did not prevent the continuation of Morocco's "hostile acts" that led to the breakdown of relations between the two countries.

"The speech of the King of Morocco Mohamed VI on the occasion of the Throne Day evokes the relations with Algeria in the same terms as those of the last years," notes the diplomat and former Algerian minister Abdelaziz Rahabi, who considers that this statement "cannot represent a diplomatic event nor open perspectives.

 "The tradition and international practice recommend that goodwill or an offer of dialogue be preceded by measures of consequence, qualitative and equal to the declared objective," said the diplomat. 

However, this is not what we are witnessing on the ground. The state of relations between the two countries has even deteriorated and Morocco remains on fixed positions vis-à-vis Algeria, with respect to which it pursues the same strategy.  For Abdelaziz Rahabi, the King of Morocco seeks instead to undermine Algeria and reserves for his country the beautiful role of the victim willing to dialogue.

The causes of the rupture are still present

"Once again, he makes Algeria responsible for the failure of the construction of the Maghreb, the poor state of bilateral relations and seeks to accredit the feeling of a Morocco victim but willing to dialogue, "he analyzed. 

"In reality, this is not the case," continues Rahabi.

"On the contrary, the official Morocco leads an operation of demonization of Algeria by presenting it as an ally of the powers and anti-Western groups and its diplomacy as hostile to the American and European interests of which it would be the best defender", estimates the former ambassador of Algeria in Spain.

He cites the campaign against Algeria's position on the war in Ukraine and Moroccan attempts to involve Algeria in the tensions between Iran, the Gulf States and Israel, "in which our country bears no responsibility whatsoever.

On the bilateral level, Morocco pursues "a strategy frankly hostile to Algeria by seeking to depreciate and falsify our long and rich history, to attack in particular, in its social networks, the presidential institution that it freely designates elsewhere, as the privileged interlocutor and to conduct a systematic war against the Algerian army and its command", accuses again Abdelaziz Rahabi who concludes with this relevant remark: the conditions that prevailed to the rupture between the two countries are still present and have not been mentioned by the king. 

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