Mauritania has protested to Libya over comments by its leader, Moammar Gadaffi, in which he called Mauritanians ”tribal” and said they were wasting their time with multi-party elections, the official news agency said.
Mauritania, a Saharan Islamic state that straddles Arab and black Africa, is holding elections this Sunday to select a civilian president to take over from a military junta that seized power in a bloodless 2005 coup.
In a speech on Friday marking the 30th anniversary of his declaration of a Jamahiriya, or state of the masses, in which political parties are banned, Gadaffi said nations were wasting their time with multi-party politics. He mentioned Mauritania.
”The Mauritanians are tribal and Bedouin people, they do not know parties or elections … It is something ridiculous when you see people this way,” the Libyan leader said.
Mauritania’s government summoned the Libyan ambassador in Nouakchott on Monday to protest against what it called these ”shocking statements” by Gadaffi, the official Mauritanian news agency, AMI, said in a report posted on its website.
It gave no more details of the protest.
A total of 19 presidential candidates are standing in Sunday’s election in Mauritania in the last stage of a promised handover to civilian rule by the military junta, which deposed President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya in August 2005.
None of the members of the junta are standing in the election and they have promised not to interfere.
Parliamentary elections were held late last year and senatorial elections in January.
”It is all a waste of time, where this supports this one and that supports the other one. Consequently, the family, the tribe and the street disintegrate,” Gadaffi said in his comments, cited by the Libyan news agency Jana.
Bordering Algeria to the north-east, Mauritania is an ally of the US-led fight against Islamic terrorists in the Sahara, and is also one of the few Arab states to recognise Israel. — Reuters