Portuguese Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho hailed the autonomy plan presented by the Kingdom to reach a solution to the dispute over the Moroccan Sahara, calling it a ”significant” initiative and ”step in before”.
“The autonomy plan presented by Morocco is an important, significant plan and a step forward,” the head of Portuguese diplomacy said on Friday in a statement to the Lusa news agency.
According to Mr. João Gomes Cravinho, it would now be appropriate “for there to be a movement to unblock the current situation” of this file. “Portugal is a neighbour. We have excellent relations with Morocco and Algeria. We understand that it would be very important to make progress towards pacifying this situation,” added the Portuguese official, on the sidelines of the closing session of the cycle of conferences “Diplomacy and independence of Portugal” at the Palace of Independence in Lisbon.
He indicated, in this respect, having sent an invitation to the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the Moroccan Sahara, Mr. Staffan de Mistura, to visit Portugal. “What we want to underline is our support for the process that the United Nations is developing, and we believe that at the end of these decades, we should seek to reach an understanding,” noted the head of diplomacy. Portugese.
The autonomy initiative proposed by Morocco in 2007 to put an end to the artificial conflict around the Moroccan Sahara is gaining more and more notoriety, credibility and presence.
After the United States, many African, Arab and Asian countries, it was around Germany, Spain and very recently the Netherlands to recognize the autonomy plan as the only serious, credible and realistic solution. regional dispute created from scratch around the Moroccan Sahara.