Algeria’s foreign ministry says the move is related to comments by the UN envoy from Morocco on the Algerian region in Kabylia.
The Algerian foreign ministry has recalled its ambassador to Morocco and hinted at possible additional measures in the latest spate of tension among North African residents over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
The move was linked to comments by Moroccan envoy to the United Nations Omar Hilal on Algeria’s Kabylie region, the ministry said after the envoy lured the region into the queue for decades on the Western Sahara, which claims Morocco and also the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria.
Hilal had called at a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement for the “right to self-determination of people living in the Kabylie region” in reference to Algeria’s Tamazight-speaking minority.
He had suggested that Algeria should not deny this while supporting the self-determination of Western Sahara.
The Polisario Front fought for the independence of Western Sahara, a Spanish colony until the mid-1970s that is now occupied and administered largely by Morocco.
The land borders between Algeria and Morocco have been closed since the early 1990s for security reasons, exacerbating frictions between Algiers and Rabat, whose relations have worsened due to the conflict.