Bouteflika was speaking in Johannesburg at the Forum on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
Responding to a spate of rumours that the Sahrawi issue is a conflict between Algeria and Morocco and that Algiers was "poised to wage war on Morocco," Bouteflika assured his peers that his country "will never declare war on Morocco, because we are men of peace.
"The Western Sahara is no casus belli between Algeria and its Moroccan brothers," the Algerian leader insisted.
He recalled that at the end of the absurd border war between Algerian and Morocco in 1963 "the victor was neither Algeria nor Morocco but war."
"The conflict is between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front," he said in South Africa, a nation that has officially recognised the Front by establishing diplomatc relations with the republic.
Algeria, Bouteflika said, has always regarded the rights of peoples to self-determination as "a cardinal principle," a principle which it has "always defended with the United Nations."
"Algeria then defended the right to self-determination of countries such as Belize, Timor or Surinam. Why would it not do so today with the Western Sahara?" the Algerian leader queried, adding that the issue is "a problem of de-colonisation" posed in Northern Africa.
Bouteflika was speaking at the forum assessing the first three years of NEPAD, which seeks to eradicate poverty and promote development in Africa.