The political tour of the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune stops in China, a country that Algeria seeks to appease to glean positions hostile to Morocco on the Sahara.
Officially it is a trip placed under the economic component, Abdelmadjid Tebboune is accompanied by a large delegation of ministers, senior army officers and business leaders.
Algeria would like to be part of the BRICS economic alliance of which China is a central country. The Algerian generals who pushed Tebboune to speak officially of a candidacy for the Brics were struck down by the reality on the ground.
Even the axis of evil, otherwise known as the alliance between Algeria and South Africa around the Sahara issue, could not have weighed in for membership in the BRICS. Worse, Algeria was not mentioned on the list of requesting and pending countries.
For Rachid Houdaigui, professor of international relations at the University Abdelmalek Essaadi, Faculty of Law of Tangier, Abdelmadjid Tebboune will not be able to draw anything from his visit to China on the economic level, underlining the economic failure since his presidency.
“Algeria thwarts the interests of the international economy before harming the Moroccan economy”, he declared, affirming that “the Algerian regime is doing its utmost to create a position which is not there and there is mistrust on the part of a certain number of countries which do not have confidence because of the context of the Sahara” and how Algeria unfolds and manifests itself on the international scene.
The international relations expert recalls that Algeria is governed by a military regime “which cannot work in parallel with a civil state, and this is the problem of all states governed by military regimes”.
Moreover, Algeria is not a strategic state for the continent, “the doors of Africa are closed from Algeria, and even if there was a desire to create an economic context, there is the instability in Mali and Niger on its borders.
Through this visit, the Algerian president does not lose sight of his ultimate objective, which seeks to thwart Moroccan diplomacy on the Sahara issue. This was particularly noticeable during these previous State visits, particularly to Serbia and Portugal, which ended in bitter failures even in the case of Russia, not to mention the planned visit to France which could not be do, for the same reasons.
The first part of Abdeladjid Tebboune’s visit to China is the affair of the Moroccan Sahara, because that can be seen with the continual exits of the Algerian State to thwart the progress of Moroccan diplomacy and above all the success of the autonomy solution presented by Morocco which happens to be the most adequate solution and in line with the relevant UN resolutions” to end the conflict.
The second part, the goal is to “influence” the favorable and positive context of relations between Rabat and Beijing, except that this possibility “is very low”, estimates the expert, judging that Morocco and China maintain relations based on understanding and clarity and solidarity between the two peoples and state entities
On the Sahara, “China has a clear position which defends the UN resolutions and I do not see why China would change its position” in favor of that advocated by Algeria, without forgetting that China considers that it has it also has a problem of sovereignty over certain territories, which means that its position cannot be against the interests of Morocco, specifies our interlocutor.
Moreover, “China relies a lot on Morocco given its geostrategic position and Beijing seeks its interests which are not in Algeria”, he noted, recalling that even though Algeria has tried to coax a number of European countries such as Italy or Germany in exchange for gas, this strategy has not yielded the expected results and its gas and oil potential remains limited in the face of demand.
“Algeria has failed to achieve good results and thwart Morocco’s interests on the Sahara issue and I see that the same scenario is repeated”, observed Rachid Houdaigui, underlining the relevance of the Moroccan position and the repeated continuous recognitions of Moroccan sovereignty and its solution of autonomy, “we have seen it with the full and clear recognition of the State of Israel before the international community”.
He added that the European Union will follow on the “same path” stressing that it is a question of interests and which encourages all partners to adhere to this momentum. “They know very well that Morocco is a country which respects its commitments, which has assets and which also seeks benefits”.