Algeria suspends the friendship treaty with Spain and freezes foreign trade operations

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Spain regrets the decision and reaffirms the principles of the treaty | The opposition requests the appearance of Albares

Algeria launches political and economic reprisals against Spain for the “unjustifiable” change of position on the Occidental Sahara.

First, Algiers has suspended this Wednesday, with an “immediate” character, the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborhood and Cooperation with Spain, according to a statement from the Presidency of the Republic.

Later, the freezing of direct debits for foreign trade operations of products to and from Spain from this Thursday June 9th. This has been communicated to the financial entities of the North African country by the Professional Association of Banks and Financial Institutions (Abef), as reported by ‘El Independiente’ and appears in information from the Algerian media outlet TSA.

Between January and July 2021 (latest available data), Spain imported 2,237 million euros from Algeria, the bulk of which was gas (92% of that amount was fuels and mineral oils, according to ICEX). For its part, Algeria imported goods from Spain worth 1,111 million euros. The contracts of the state gas company Sonatrach with the Spanish companies are about to expire and must be renewed. It is unknown at the moment how this measure can affect the gas flow.

An “unjustified” turn

“The Spanish authorities have launched a campaign to justify the position they have adopted on Western Sahara, a violation of your legal obligationsmoral and political power as administrator of the territory that weigh on the Kingdom of Spain”, said the Algerian Government in a statement to justify the rupture of the friendship treaty. On March 18, Spain changed its official position towards the conflict and endorsed in writing the Moroccan proposal to give autonomy to the former Spanish colony.

The Spanish Government has regretted Algeria’s decision to suspend the Treaty, but has reaffirmed its “full commitment” to its content, especially with regard to respect for principles of the Charter of the United Nations and International Law.

Asked if he fears that Algeria cut off the gas supply to Spain in retaliation, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has assured that “the Algerian Government is well known for being a reliable partner and a reliable supplier. Guarantees have been given by the Algerian government at the highest level in this regard, so nothing tells me that it will be otherwise.”

The head of Spanish diplomacy has said that he reiterates his “will to maintain the best relations both with Algeria and with all our neighbours, based on mutual respect and cooperation and on what is mutually beneficial for our two peoples”.

The Popular Parliamentary Group has requested the appearance in the Congress of Albares, so that it gives explanations in parliamentary headquarters about this suspension. The popular ones say that it is “very bad news” that obeys “the absence of a true foreign policy with a sense of Stateas well as the unilateral twists and turns of the President of the Government, because where there is a problem, instead of solving it, it generates three”.

Albares has said that he has “no problem” to appear in Congress.

The Spanish-Algerian treaty sought strengthen the political dialogue between the two countries, at all levelsand the development of cooperation in the economic, financial, educational and defense fields.

The head of the Polisario Front in our country, Abdullah Arabi has reacted, in statements to El Periódico de España, a newspaper of the same group, Prensa Ibérica, that this newspaper, after hearing the news, assuring that the Algiers communiqué shows the contradictions of Spain by minimizing the damage that the change towards the Sahara has course for relations with Algeria.

“The right of the Saharawi people to decide their future has been violated,” he added. The Spanish change of position, he assures, raises tension and escalation in North Africa. Morocco and the Polisario Front are technically at war since Rabat entered Western Sahara with the Green March of tens of thousands of people in 1975. In 1991 they declared a ceasefire, which was broken on November 13, 2020.

Two decades of friendship agreement

On March 19, Algeria decided to call “for consultations with immediate effect” its ambassador in Madrid, Said Moussi, after the “sudden change” of Spain’s position regarding the Sahara. The day before, Morocco had made public the content of a letter written by Pedro Sánchez to King Mohamed VI in which the President of the Spanish Government told him that he recognized the Rabat plan to give “autonomy” to Western Sahara as the “most serious, credible and realistic” plan to solve the historic conflict.

Since then, Moussi has been in Algiers and there is no Algerian ambassador in Madrid.

The agreement had been in force for two decades, since October 8, 2002. The text reflects, in particular, the “strict adherence to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of International Law as fundamental elements for the maintenance of peace, security and justice in international society, in particular the principles of sovereign equality of States, non-interference in internal affairs and respect for the inalienable right of peoples to dispose of themselves & rdquor ;, as stressed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

opposition criticism

The deputy secretary general of Ciudadanos, Edmundo Bal, considers that Algeria’s decision to suspend the friendship treaty with Spain demonstrates the “negligence” of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, with its change of position with the Sahara. “What a business he has done exchanging the good neighborliness of one country for that of the other,” she said.

The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, has said that the Spanish “deserve explanations”: “Pedro Sánchez has done it again. Algeria breaks the good neighborly treaty with Spain. Another consequence of the lack of State policy“, has affirmed the ‘number two’ of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

In the debate held in Congress on the change of position in the Sahara, Gamarra had already demanded that the President of the Government fix “as soon as possible the mess” that he has generated in relations with Algeria” and that they are marking the economy because they are exports being affected.

The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has asked to fire Sánchez“to recover sovereignty and international prestige” because, as he has said on Twitter, his “whims” mark Spain’s foreign policy.



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