On the sidelines of the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly held in New York, the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Mr. Salaheddine Mezouar, offered last friday a lunch in honor of his African counterparts.
During the event, Mezouar said that “patterns of development should not be subject to any rating, ranking or guardianship,” a statement from Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs read, adding that King Mohammed VI has called, in his speech, for the respect of “the specificities of each country, in its national itinerary, and of its will to build its own model of development.”
Mezouar also stressed that “Morocco has chosen to build its relations with Africa on the basis of a win-win strategic partnership, with respect to the specificities of each country and its right to development, away from any foreign interference,” the aforementioned source reported.
He, later on, further noted that “sustainable development can not be imposed by decisions or ready made recipes, nor is there a single model, in this respect.»
The minister said that the Royal Speech emphasized that Africa’s problems stem, in particular, from its increasing economic dependence, in the absence of a model of sustainable development, mainly referring to King Mohammed VI’s speech which stressed that “stability can not be achieved without development, and development can not be possible but within stability,” noting that both are related to the respect of the countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, their cultures and customs, and the right of their peoples to lead a decent life.
The same source closed adding that Mezouar also reminded of the big prejudices done by colonialism to States that have experienced guardianship, specifying that His Majesty the King Mohammed VI said, “that after all these bad effects, Western countries have no right to require from Southern countries a radical and rapid change, according to a scheme that is different from their cultures, their principles and their own assets, as if development could not be achieved but on the basis of a unique model: the Western one.”
The Moroccan Times.
