NewYork, July 20, 2011 (SPS) - The eighth round of UN-sponsored informal talks between the Polisario Front and Morocco on the Western Sahara issue opened Wednesday in Manhasset (New York).
The two-day meeting, the fourth in the current year and over a month after the last informal round, is being held behind closed doors under the auspices of the UN Secretary General’s special envoy for Western Sahara Christopher Ross, in the presence of the delegations of the two parties to the conflict and representatives of the two observing countries, Algeria and Mauritania.
The Saharawi delegation was led by the chairman of the National Council of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Parliament), Mr. Khatri Addouh and also composed of the Saharawi coordinator with the UN Mission for a referendum in Western Sahara ( MINURSO), Mr. M'hamed Khaddad, and the Polisario Front representative to the UN, Ahmed Boukhari.
In a statement Tuesday to the APS, Mr. Bukhari pointed out that the Polisario Front hopes that “Morocco returns to reason and the commitments we have all subscribed to in front of the international community in 1991 and 1997 before being endorsed by the UN Security Council,"
The aim of these international commitments, he recalled, "is to begin the process of decolonization in Western Sahara and to allow the Saharawi people exercise its inalienable right to self-determination through a referendum organized by the United Nations in cooperation with the African Union."
The Saharawi President, Mohamed Abdelaziz, qualified Tuesday in Boumerdes (50 km east of Algiers) the agenda presented by the SG of the UN as "important".
In a statement on the sidelines of the closing of the second Summer School the SADR cadres, President Abdelaziz said he was "optimistic" about this new round of negotiations, wishing it will receive the same will from the Moroccan delegation.
The Saharawi president added that during this two-day meeting, there will be a reflection on other areas related to the issue of voters with the prospect of a referendum on self-determination.
It is worth mentioning that the Polisario Front and Morocco had begun in June 2007 direct negotiations under the auspices of the UN, with four rounds that took place in Manhasset (USA), and eight informal meetings in Vienna (Austria ), in Valletta (Malta) and in Manhasset. (SPS)
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