Algeria has decided to proceed with the “immediate” suspension of the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborhood and Cooperation with Spain, according to a statement from the Presidency of the Republic reported on Wednesday and made public by the Algerian state news agency.
«The Spanish authorities have carried out a campaign to justify the position they have adopted on Western Sahara in violation of their legal, moral and political obligations as the administering power of the territory that weigh on the Kingdom of Spain until the decolonization of Western Sahara is completed» , specified the statement.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry has regretted this announcement and through a statement, “reaffirms its full commitment to the content of the Treaty and the principles”. “The Government of Spain considers Algeria a neighboring and friendly country and reiterates its full availability to continue maintaining and developing the special cooperative relations between the two countries, for the benefit of both peoples,” they say from Foreign Affairs
Spain and Algeria signed this treaty in 2002 during the state visit that President Abdelaziz Buteflika made that year.
This new gesture from Algiers is added to the call for consultations from the Algerian ambassador in Spain a few months ago. On March 19 and after the announcement of the change of position of the Government of Pedro Sánchez on the issue of Western Sahara, Algiers called its ambassador in Madrid, Said Moussi, for consultations.
Pedro Sánchez himself, through a letter addressed to the Moroccan King Mohamed VI, swerved 180 degrees and took sides with Morocco on the issue of the former colony, accepting the Moroccan proposal on autonomy. This shift served Sánchez to put an end to the diplomatic conflict with the Alawite kingdom, opened since May of last year after the covert entry of the Polisario Front leader, Brahim Gali, but opened a new gap with a neighboring country in North Africa. .
“Surprised by this sudden change in position of the former administering power of Western Sahara, the Algerian authorities have decided to call their ambassador in Madrid for consultations with immediate effect,” said a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Algiers.
There have been several threats that Algeria has made to Spain, especially on the gas issue. The latest pressures have been to try to break the gas supply contracts if the Executive of Pedro Sánchez allows Morocco to use the Maghreb gas pipeline that was closed by that country in October last year. Algiers is the second gas supplier to Spain, only behind the United States.
