New York, March 12, 2012 (SPS) - Works of the ninth round of the informal negotiations between the Polisario Front and Morocco opened today in Greentree estate, suburbs of New York, under auspices of the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara, Mr. Christopher Ross, and in the presence of representative of the observer countries: Algeria and Mauritania.
The Saharawi negotiating delegation led by Speaker of the Saharawi National Council, Mr. Khatri Addouh, and includes Coordinator with the MINURSO, Mr. Mhamed Khaddad, Polisario Representative to the UN, Boukhari Ahmed, in addition to a Moroccan delegation led by the Moroccan Foreign Minister.
The new round will be lasted for two days in closed sessions.
During this meeting the parties will, as previously agreed, further deepen their discussion of their respective proposals on a settlement, as to deepening the search on the new ideas related to the topic of governance (environment, natural resources, demining and electoral body) presented by the UN Secretary General in his report issued last April, which is included in the paragraph 120 of the resolution 1979 approved by the UN Security Council, according to a statements of the UN Spokesman to the press on the eve of the negotiations.
The UN Spokesman indicated that this meeting will be an opportunity to examine the progress of the confidence-building measures and the last coordinating meeting organized last January in Geneva by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The meeting comes just eight months after the holding of the eighth round of negotiations.
In a recent statement to APS, Mr. Boukhari Ahmed stressed that this round “will be an opportunity for Morocco to get rid of the burden of an occupation war with no future and contrary to international law, whose pursuit only questioning the sincerity of the verbal commitments of Morocco on the reactivation the Maghreb construction process.”
The Polisario Front and Morocco initiated in June 2007 direct negotiations under the UN auspices, with four rounds that took place in Manhasset (United States), and nine informal meetings in Vienna (Austria), Valletta (Malta) and Manhasset (U.S.). (SPS)
090/089/TRA