CAIRO: France’s decision to utilize the French Development Agency (AFD) to fund projects in the disputed Sahrawi areas is a “provocative” action, Algerian state media said on Sunday, citing an announcement from Western Sahara’s Information Ministry.
Morocco considers Western Sahara its own, while an Algerian-backed independence movement seeks an autonomous state.
“This is an imminent increase of France’s harsh stance toward the Sahrawi people,” the ministry stated, adding that France’s proposal “represents explicit support for Morocco’s illegal occupation of parts of Western Sahara.”
The announcement followed a visit to Morocco by France’s international trade minister, Franck Riester, last week.
“The restoration of French-Moroccan ties requires new bridges between our private sectors,” Riester wrote on X during his visit.
According to an editorial in France’s Le Monde newspaper, Riester stated that the AFD, through its private sector finance arm Proparco, might assist in funding a project involving a high-voltage power line between Dakhla, Western Sahara’s capital, and the Moroccan port city of Casablanca.
The Western Sahara Information Ministry stated, “The Sahrawi government once more calls on all countries of the world, as well as the public and private sectors, to refrain from carrying out any activity of any kind in the Sahrawi national territory.”
Morocco took over most of Western Sahara from colonial Spain in 1975. This started a guerrilla war with the Sahrawi people’s Polisario Front, which says the desert territory in the northwest of Africa belongs to Morocco.
The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991 and sent in a mission to help organize a referendum on the future of the territory, but the sides have been deadlocked since.
Iqra Khan 
Arshad Hussain