RABAT: Algeria has expelled the first Chancellor of the Mauritanian Embassy four days after the deportation of an Algerian diplomat of the same grade of Nouakchott, and following the publication of an article about the Moroccan drug that invades Mauritania according to official sources.
According to the official news agency in Algeria, citing a source in the Foreign Ministry, “the Mauritanian ambassador to Algeria was called on Sunday for four minutes to inform him of the decision to expel Mauritanian diplomat under the principle of reciprocity.”
Mauritania has expelled the first Chancellor of the Embassy of Algeria in Nouakchott Chroati Belkacem, “who left the country Wednesday night,” according to a security source of the Agence France Presse, who preferred to remain anonymous.
The website’s editor, Moulaye Brahim Ould Moulaye M’Hamed, has been questioned by police, accused of damaging Mauritania’s relationship with Morocco by spreading “lies and false allegations”, a Mauritanian security source told AFP.
The source said that Chroati is behind publishing an article claiming they had complained to the United Nations that Morocco was flooding Mauritania with drugs.
Mauritanian authorities say the article published by Al-Bayan misrepresents a report on Western Sahara presented by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council on April 10.
The account of a February and March regional tour by Ban’s envoy Christopher Ross, says Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz “drew attention to some negative impacts of the conflict, particularly the arrival of a considerable amount of cannabis resin at his country’s northern border, in transit to Mali and beyond”.
“He stressed that the phenomenon posed a serious threat to the security of all countries of the Sahel-Saharan region because it contributed to the financing of criminal groups, extremists and terrorists,” the report goes on.
The Algerian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment by AFP.Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony controlled by Morocco, is claimed by the pro-independence Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, a dispute in which Mauritania affirms its “positive neutrality”.
Morocco is one of the world’s leading cannabis producers, but the authorities insist they are battling the trade, which supports more than 700,000 Moroccans, according to the interior ministry.
