Reasons for the Tunisian president’s reluctance to welcome Polisario’s leader

Last Friday, August 26, 2022, on the Algerian presidential plane that landed at Tunis-Carthage airport, was Guy Said lied to by making him believe that he was the head of state of Burundi, the Algerian delegation and, coincidentally, the leader of Polisario?

In any case, until Polisario’s leader arrived on the tarmac, the live commentator of Tunisian public television spoke only of the Algerian delegation, without mentioning the identity of the personality who headed it.

On the official Algerian flight, the Algerian trade minister, Brahim Ghali, finally caught the passengers’ attention, if there was a delegation from Burundi. The rest, we know.

8 It should be noted that it is now established that the signatories of the invitations addressed to the participants were Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Tunisian President Gais Said.^e African-Japanese Forum (Dicot 8). Also, a document from the Japanese mission to the African Union dated August 19, 2022, confirms that the Polisario was not invited to this demonstration in Tunis because Japan does not recognize it and has always refused to invite him to ” his” forum.

A document from the Japan Mission to the African Union confirms that neither Japan nor the African Union has extended an invitation to the Polisario to attend Dicot 8 in Tunis.

© Copyright : Mission of Japan to the African Union

It is therefore clear that contrary to what Tunisian diplomacy claims, the presence of Polisario separatists in Tunisia does not constitute an African Union. The so-called “weight of Algeria” is not in question, and it prompted this decision, which was later misattributed to the Pan-African organization. Actually Kaïs Saïed is not so stupid and it is already well known that Algeria does not represent anything within the African Union, as demonstrated by the wave that on July 15 confronted Algiers’ desire to host the new African Medicines Agency at all costs. This defeat of Algeria, which gathered 47 votes against Rwanda against 8 votes (including its own, the Polisario and … Tunisia’s votes), is a sign of its total isolation on the continent, and a sign of this country’s weak influence. Pan-African Organisation.

Also, even admitting that it was the AU that invited Brahim Khali to Dikat 8, why, in this case, did Qais Saeed personally come to Tunis airport? – To welcome the leader of the Carthage Polisario “with love”, while the Tunisian President already knows that such an unfriendly gesture towards the Kingdom of Morocco will inevitably trigger an unprecedented diplomatic storm between Tunis and Rabat?

As a head of state who needs to be particularly alerted, it is unthinkable that Guy’s Side ignores the adventures of previous meetings of Dicot, where the Polisario has always been declared unpopular. He is not unaware that in all the previous meetings of the Afro-Japanese Forum, when Polisario’s separatists entered it and won, Morocco never agreed to sit with them for a second.

Suffice it to say that it was evidence of a compromise at the highest summit of the Algerian and Tunisian regimes, leading to the theatrical reception reserved for the separatist leader in Tunis.

But Morocco’s decisive reaction to the knock on the door of the Dicot 8, with its strong decision to immediately recall the Moroccan ambassador to Tunis for consultations, had the merit of shaking the African Union, which is now forced to cross itself. Clearly clarify the rules for the participation of its members in the next partnership meetings (Japan, China, EU, etc.). The European Union and Japan, which do not recognize Polisario, should also follow in China’s footsteps, which only accepts UN-recognized sovereign states in its forum with Africa.

Qais Syed, generally seen as his country’s greatest constitutional expert, surely did not know that one day in March 1980 Tunisian power was almost wiped out by a joint Algerian-Libyan conspiracy. Following this episode, remembered by history as the “Kafsa Affair”, in which a military commando attempted to overthrow the regime of Habib Bourguiba, the late King Hassan II made it clear that Morocco was prepared to intervene militarily if necessary. Tunisian people. “If Tunisia is attacked, Morocco has already arranged to be on the side of the Tunisian people,” the late sovereign said at the time.

But Qaiz Said’s loyalty to the Algerian military regime means that he is ready to break the neck of his country’s 66-year-old diplomacy and plant himself on the chest of the failed camp.