MAP: Morocco severs ties with Iran, gives diplomats one week to depart

Morocco severs diplomatic relations with Iran

Rabat- Morocco has decided to sever its diplomatic ties with Iran, starting Friday March 6, 2009, a statement of the Foreign Affairs announced.

 

   The document cites the “inadmissible attitude” of the Iranian authorities against Morocco, and the activities of its representation in Rabat to alter the religious fundamentals of Morocco as causes of this decision.

   Morocco has recalled on February 25 its interim chargé d’affaires in Tehran for consultations for a week, says the document.

   Morocco has also demanded explanations from Iran after it issued a communiqué that included “unacceptable” language following Morocco’s solidarity, like many other countries, with the territorial integrity of Bahrain, the document adds.

   According to the foreign ministry, Iran’s diplomatic representation members were trying to alter the fundamentals of the identity of the Moroccan people, and to undermine the uniqueness of cult and of the Sunnite Malekite rite adopted in the north African kingdom.

   Such activities constitute an unbearable interference in the domestic affairs of Morocco, and run contrary to the diplomatic rules and ethics, it stresses.

   For these reasons, and as the one-week deadline expired without the Iranian authorities providing any explanation, the Moroccan authorities have decided to cut diplomatic relations with Iran, the release concludes.

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Palestinian journalist recounts the horror of Jan. 8 when Israel killed her mother and husband

Ihssane, the story of a shattered life in Gaza

Gaza, Feb. 3, 2009 (MAP) – Ihssane Abu El Naja, a 27-year-old journalist living in Gaza had plenty of dreams for herself, her husband and her newborn baby boy. But all her dreams faded away and her life was shattered to pieces in seconds on that January 8.

 

    It was 5:30 pm. She was at her parents’ 7th floor apartment in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, sitting at the balcony with her mother and husband. She heard a loud detonation and then felt she was going down, down in an abyss. When she woke up maybe minutes, maybe hours later the flat was reduced to rubble and her world had collapsed. An Israeli tank had shelled the building, killing her mother and husband, and wounding her for life.

    “The scars on my body  may heal some day. But how can I erase from my memory the image of my beloved ones lying lifeless at my side?”, she says in a voice that can hardly be heard during a visit to Al-Quds hospital in Gaza, where she went to receive the necessary care and consult a psychiatrist, who happened to be member of the Moroccan medical delegation dispatched to Gaza to help Palestinian physicians overwhelmed by the large number of patients injured during the Israeli raids.

    “I know, I am not the only one undergoing this tragedy. It is a fate shared by thousands of other Palestinians,” says this young  Moroccan-Palestinian lady, choking with emotion, at the memory of her Moroccan mother Roukaya El Radi, and husband Ihab El Wahidi, a photographer of the Palestinian president.

    As emotional as his daughter, Mohamed Abou El Naja, a graduate of a Moroccan university who returned to Gaza last October at the end of his mission as Ambassador of Palestine in Dakar, spoke of his own sufferings but especially of the state of shock his daughter has been in since the death of her mother and husband.

    “Because of her psychological state, we decided to seek the help of a psychiatrist,” he says. 

    Ihssane is all the more affected by what she had been through as her injuries prevent her from breastfeeding her 10-month baby, he explains. This aggravates her suffering.

    The bombings by the Israeli army are a “war crime”. Israeli leaders should be brought to justice for their crimes, he says in a bitter voice. “Israel makes efforts to destroy the present and the future of the Palestinian people.”