I should like first of all to welcome His Excellency President Jorge Sampaio, the High
Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, and congratulate him on his commendable
work on behalf of dialogue and the rapprochement of cultures.
I should also like to reiterate what I said following the address by the
Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference here in the OSCE Permanent
Council on 6 May 2010: “the Andalusian era, in which the dialogue of civilizations and the
coexistence of religions was a historical fact, unequivocally demonstrates the baselessness of
the theory of the clash of civilizations – a theory that we should all reject as an outright
deception and an intellectual fraud”.
In our view, this is the essential objective of the Alliance of Civilizations, which is
why Morocco is not only a member of the Group of Friends of the United Nations Alliance of
Civilizations but was also one of the countries that spared no effort to promote the
implementation of this proposal by Spain and Turkey which later became a United Nations
initiative. Indeed, the Adviser to His Majesty King Mohammed VI Mr. André Azoulay, the
current President of the Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, is one of
the ten personalities forming the high-level advisory group that was established in 2005 by
the United Nations Secretary-General and drew up a plan of action for the Alliance of
Civilizations.
Morocco, as a member of the Group of Friends of the Alliance and as an OSCE
Partner for Co-operation, welcomes the fact that this United Nations initiative has gained a
new participant since the United States of America joined the Group of Friends; the number
of OSCE participating States or Partners for Co-operation that are also part of the Alliance