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Strong international reactions against Trump’s announcement

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Algiers, 13 December 2020 (SPS) - The international reactions continued on Friday denouncing the announcement of the outgoing American President Donald Trump of his recognition of alleged sovereignty of Morocco over Western Sahara, considering it a blatant violation of the right of the Sahrawi people and the international legality.
Through the voice of its Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia said that Trump’s unilateral decision falls completely outside of the scope of the international law.
“The decision doesn’t comply with the decisions and resolution of the UN Security Council, on which the American themselves agreed,” added the Russian official.
In the United States of America, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Jim Inhofe, also a member of the Republican party, expressed “sadness” and “disappointment” at the decision of President Trump, pointing out that such a step will never change the positions of the international community on the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination,” stressing that the White House’ announcement alleging Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara is “shocking and deeply disappointing.”
For his part, senator Patrick Leahy affirmed that Donald Trump “can’t ignore the international law and that of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.”
The democrat elected of Minnesota Betty MacCollum said that the actions of Trump, who will leave the White House on 20 January 2021, render “dangerously legitimate the illegal annexation of the Sahrawi territory.”
Former US national security advisor John Bolton also reacted to the decision of Trump who abandoned, according to him, “thirty years of American policy on Western Sahara.”
“Trump was wrong to abandon thirty years of US policy on Western Sahara just to score a fast foreign policy victory,” he lamented.
Head of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, democrat Eliot Engel, warned that this decision threatens the efforts of international diplomacy to resolve long-standing conflicts. (…) I am concerned this announcement upends a credible internationally supported UN process to address the territorial dispute over Western Sahara which successive administrations of both parties have supported,” he added. (SPS)
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