Security Council Shows no Support to Ban Ki-moon in His Feud Against Morocco

PERSISMA, New York – In a new twist in the crisis between Morocco and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Security Council has shown no unanimous support to Ban Ki-moon in his feud with Morocco, following the statements he made earlier this March during his trip to the Tindouf camps and Algiers.

Following the UN chief statements in which he described Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara as “occupation,” Rabat issued an unusually strong communique in which it accused Ban of “departing from his neutrality and impartiality and of taking sides for the Polisario and Algeria.”

On Monday, Morocco’s foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar conveyed to the UN chief Rabat’s decision to reduce the presence of the UN Mission in Morocco’s southern provinces, known by its French acronym as MINURSO.

Following Morocco’s unprecedented decision, members of the Security Council asked Deputy UN Secretary General, Jeffrey Feltman to brief the Council on the current situation.

According to sources that attended the closed meeting held at 2 pm local time, Feltman told the Security Council that Ban Ki-moon’s words “were a slip of the tongue because he has dismayed by the situation of refugees he saw.”

According to the same sources, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia suggested to the President of the SC to contact Morocco to take back its decision made on Monday. But France, Senegal and Spain, Egypt and Japan said no, arguing that the crisis is between Morocco and the UNSG personally, not between Rabat and the United Nations.

An UN expert based in New York told Morocco World News that Security Council “did not back Secretary General as it always does automatically.”