Western Sahara
UN preparing to abandon Western Sahara?

afrol.com, 30 September - As the UN is loosing ground on the Western Sahara issue due the Moroccan drainage, fears are coming up that it will abandon Sahara. Yesterday, two embarrassing failures were seen. UN-mediated talks on Western Sahara between the two parties in Berlin again were "inconclusive" and the debate in the UN Decolonisation Committee turned out a farce.

In a UN press release, a UN spokesman tonight concluded that "the latest negotiating effort to resolve differences between Morocco and the Frente Polisario over the disputed Territory of Western Sahara have ended inconclusively." 

The direct talks between the parties took place in Berlin yesterday under the aupices of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Personal Envoy, James Baker III. "The meeting was again inconclusive," Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, told reporters in New York. "The Personal Envoy will make his recommendations to the Secretary-General as to whether there should be a follow-up meeting."

Asked to elaborate further, Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General would have to determine the status of the peace process and whether it had any prospect of moving forward. "We're not in a position now to fully assess this latest round," he stressed.

Mr. Baker met with the parties, Morocco and the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y del Rio de Oro (Frente Polisario), to resolve the multiple problems relating to the implementation of the settlement plan for Western Sahara and to try to find agreement on a mutually acceptable political solution to the dispute.

In order to implement the settlement plan, the UN has deployed a peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known by its French acronym MINURSO. The Mission's aim is to hold a referendum to allow the people of the Territory to decide between independence or integration with Morocco. Its current mandate will expire at the end of October.

Meanwhile, the debate in the UN Decolonisation Committee turned into an embarrassing farce. While supporters of Sahrawi independence had dominated the day before, speakers on the pay-roll of the Moroccan government dominated tonight. 

Last night, the Moroccan representative to the Committee tried to achieve an exclusion of the POLISARIO spokesman's statement. The debate thus was dominated by the question of whether this spokesman should have the right to speak or not. Today, the Algerian representative tried to turn the hearing into a debate on how much time pro-Moroccan petitioners could speak or answer questions.

It was an embarrassing experience, reminding more of a kindergarten than a meeting of diplomats. Typical quotes from the "debate" were as follows:

Mohamed Belaoura, from Algeria, interrupted a pro-Moroccan petitioner, saying that this "had the right to speak for ten minutes and answer questions concisely." He requested that answer time not compete with other petitioners’ time and the other work that remained to be done on the agenda. 

The reply came from the Moroccan representative, Mr. Zahid, saying that "it was possible that the representative of Algeria did not want to hear the information being given by the petitioner. If so, he should leave the room." 

These quotes pretty much sum up the Committee meeting, not leaving much hope for a UN solution on the Western Sahara issue. 

The Namibian representative, George Liswaniso, summed up the situation well by stating that "his delegation was discouraged by the recent reports by the Secretary-General on the question of Western Sahara, which cast a shadow of doubt on the implementation of the settlement plan. Namibia could not support any other arrangement than the United Nations plan, certainly not any plan which sought to undermine the aspirations of the people of Western Sahara to independence." 

Liswaniso urged the international community "not to abandon the people of Western Sahara." 

However, UN rhetoric is pointing in just that way. The latest efforts to make the Moroccans and the Sahrawi negotiate a solution on their own, disregarding earlier UN resolutions on a settlement plan (including a referendum), point to the conclusion that the UN is seeking its way out of the endless Western Sahara issue. It is only pointed out too clearly in UN papers lately, that the UN mission in Sahara ends in October.

Moroccan draining policy might thus be winning, and, as we were informed yesterday, Morocco wisely has used the cease fire to get a military upper hand. While the UN might be preparing to pull out, the parties are preparing for the return of open hostilities. The Moroccan army is ready and the POLISARIO is talking more and more loudly of a possible breaking down of the cease fire.

Source: Based on UN  sources

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