"We affirm our support to the sister kingdom of Morocco with regard to its autonomy project" for the Sahara, stressed Abdallah Sambi, addressing the closing session of the two-day 19th Pan-Arab summit held in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on March 28-29.
The three-decade-old conflict over the Sahara broke out in 1976, a year after Morocco had retrieved the former Spanish colony under the Madrid Accord signed with Spain and Mauritania. The Polisario separatists, backed by Morocco's eastern neighbor, Algeria, lay claims to this Moroccan territory.
Touching on the challenges the joint Arab action should take up in an ever-changing world context, Sambi noted that the Arab action is required to control its intervention mechanisms and optimize its methods.
He also underlined the need to preserve the Arab entity "which cannot be dissociated from our identity, our civilization and our common destiny."
The 19th Arab Summit wrapped up its proceedings today by adopting the Arab peace initiative, proposed by king Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the then crown prince, five years ago in the Beirut summit, as a fundamental framework for a fair and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli struggle. It also touched on several other issues, on Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia.
On Wednesday, King Mohammed VI addressed a message to the Summit, in which the Moroccan monarch was represented by his younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, calling on Arab leaders to "embrace the spirit of dialog" in order to "rise to the challenges confronting Arab nations, and to avoid division."