Several representatives of the Polisario Front and Morocco will sit on Wednesday and Thursday in Geneva in a round-table discussion sponsored by the UN will also participate in Algeria and Mauritania as observer countries. The latest talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front were held in Manhaset (united States) in march 2012. The positions remain unchanged in a conflict that has served more than four decades. Here are some key elements to understand it.
What is negotiated in the Geneva meeting?
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Officially it is a round table, they are not even negotiations. The aim will be to draw up a plan of action that may lead to official negotiations and set another meeting future. The personal envoy of the secretary-general of the UN for the Sahara, the German Horst Köhler, has asked the parties maximum discretion.
The lawyer of a moroccan and an expert on the matter Naoufal Bamri points out: “The important thing is to overcome the various errors committed in the negotiations of Manhaset, which became useless due to the absence of a clear agenda and precise.”
What positions bring Morocco and the Polisario Front in Geneva?
The Polisario Front, through a spokesman, indicated that it is open to “all possibilities of solution, as long as the self-determination and independence are present”. For its part, Morocco is only willing to talk about a possible autonomy or self-government within the moroccan kingdom. It is what Morocco is often called a “realistic proposition”.
What position defends Algeria?
The support of Algeria to the Polisario Front remains firm in his fight for a referendum of self-determination. Morocco has always sought to involve directly to Algeria in the negotiations, because he thinks that is the crucial element of the conflict with the Sahara. Rabat is already considered a diplomatic victory the fact of having granted to Algeria in the table.
The Polisario Front considers that imply directly to Algiers, is to convert a “process of decolonization” in a “regional conflict” between Algeria and Morocco. “So it would eliminate the Polisario Front as the only valid interlocutor to speak in the name of Western Sahara,” says a spokesperson of the Polisario, who recalls that in its beginnings, this armed group was not supported by Algeria.
What is the position of Mauritania?
“Mauritania is considered to be a neutral party and supports the political process in the framework of the United Nations,” says the lawyer Bamri, who adds: “Morocco has not had any problem with Mauritania. Unfortunately, who plays a negative role in the conflict is Algeria.”
For its part, a spokesman for the Polisario Front points out that Mauritania’s always talking of “neutral positive”. “Depending on the context and the pressures on the part of Morocco sometimes Mauritania says he supports a resolution to the conflict in the framework of the UN, and other times speaks of the referendum of self-determination of the sahara. But a significant fact is that in the last crisis, territorial that we have had with Morocco, in the buffer zone of Guerguerat, Mauritania never condemned the Polisario Front, neither in public nor in private,” says the spokesman for polisario.
What has been the role of the U.S. in the conflict?
the united States is in charge of drafting each year the Security Council resolutions on the conflict, as was agreed in the peace plan signed in 1991.
The Administration of Donald Trump has supported with firmness the efforts of the special envoy Köhler to get the meeting in Geneva. The Polisario is convinced that the secretary of Security of the united States, John Bolton, has always been very favourable towards the claims of the sahrawi people.
What is the position of Russia?
The Polisario Front values the abstention Russian in the last resolution of the Security Council, in October, as “a form of protest against the yielding that has been the message of the UN with France, the main ally of Morocco among Vevobahis the five permanent members of the Council.
For his part, the lawyer Bamri remember that Russia is not opposed to a UN resolution, “where there is no mention of the referendum on self-determination”.
why the UN does not speak of self-determination referendum?
despite the fact that the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) has expressed the word, since its creation in 1991, the resolutions of the UN hardly speak because of the referendum. In fact, the resolution of the 31st of October only mentioned once in the full name of Minurso. In its place was employed on two occasions the expression “self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”.
The defenders of a moroccan Sahara desert, as Bamri, believe that the UN knows that the only “realistic solution” is a autonomy. And believe that the UN knows that an independent State in the south of Morocco would be a “danger and a threat” to peace in the region.
however, for the Polisario Front, the reason that every time it’s mentioned unless the word referendum is due only to France, the main ally of Rabat in the Security Council. “The united states cannot afford the luxury of assuming a veto of an ally such as France. The united states needs France in the syrian conflict. And also in the conflict of Israel, in the which has recognized Jerusalem as the israeli capital. Prefers to give in on issues of the Western Sahara, which for them is a low-intensity conflict, and to keep France as an ally,” says the quoted spokesperson.
How has evolved the position of Spain in this crisis?
The president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, visited Morocco for the first time in November. In a joint appearance before the media, the head of moroccan Government, Saadedín the Otmani, he thanked “the support of Spain to the thesis of Morocco on the Sahara”. However, Sanchez noted, and stated that Spain supports the resolution of the conflict in the framework of the UN as a “State policy” maintained for decades by Governments of different political color.
The Polisario Front understood that Spain has failed to fulfill “its responsibilities, historical, moral, juridical and historical” in relation to the Sahara. “With the PSOE looks for an approach to the thesis moroccan and a submission in international politics,” says a spokesperson for the organization.
How did the conflict of the Sahara?
In 1973 I was bornor the armed group Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front) to vindicate the independence of Western Sahara from Spain, which administered the territory as a colony from 1883. In 1975 Spain ceded control of those territories to Morocco and Mauritania, without counting with the Polisario Front, which entered into war with these two countries.
In 1976 the Front founded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as tens of thousands of sahrawis are exiled in camps near the town on the algerian Tindouf, in the middle of the desert.
Since then, the Polisario went to war with Mauritania, and Morocco. Mauritania signed peace in 1979, and with Morocco ceasefire in 1991, date in which was created the Minurso. Since then he claims the referendum. However, in 2007, Morocco rejected the option of a consultation on the independence and offered to change the offer of an autonomy regime in Morocco.
how Many sahrawis live in the camps and what is their legal status? What is your legal status?
The UN agency for refugees (Unhcr) counted up to the last year, a total of 173.600 saharawi people as inhabitants of the refugee camps close to Tindouf. The UN considered refugees prima facie, that is to say, at first glance.
Morocco believes that the Polisario Front inflated that figure to get more humanitarian aid from the international community.
