During a meeting held this week at the African Parliament, a Moroccan representative and a person who represented the Polisario clashed. The meeting was temporarily suspended. A meeting, held this week in Kigali (Rwanda) at the African Parliament, was interrupted for several minutes after the representative of Morocco and a person representing the Polisario Front clashed. The information was confirmed Tuesday, 23rd of October, by Futuro Sahara which relayed the version of the story of the Separatist movement. According to the pro-Polisario online newspaper, the Moroccan delegation «tried to obstruct the meeting which was attended by the Front's representatives». Morocco's representative, according to Futura Sahara, have allegedly insulted members of the «Polisario delegation» which has pushed the African Parliament to issue a warning against Morocco. Morocco's version of the story But it seems that things took a different turn. A diplomatic source told Yabiladi on Wednesday, 24th of October, that the clash occurred «during a meeting held by the North Africa regional caucus», during the sidelines of the Pan-African Parliament. «The Polisario representative, Jamel Bendir Khettari, took the floor calling the Moroccan representative, Meryem Ouhssata, the daughter of a country that occupies his territory», said the same source, adding that «this provocation has pushed the Moroccan delegation to react». «This was the reason why the two parties clashed, which led to the temporary suspension of the meeting», explained the same source. After the resumption of the meeting, the president of the Pan-African Parliament, Roger Nkodo Dang did intervene. But he claimed, according to our source, «that the attitude of the Polisario representative was abnormal and that the territorial dispute is to be resolved at the UN». «He added that this issue should not be addressed in a caucus meeting», concluded the same source. For the record, this is not the first time that a clash between representatives of Morocco and elements of the Polisario Front breaks out in the middle of an African Union meeting. Last year, the Nelson Mandela conference room, at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, was home to the first direct confrontation between Morocco and the Polisario because of a paragraph in a report conducted by the African Commission on human and Peoples' Rights.
