New York, July 19, 2011 (SPS) - Polisario Front has called on Morocco to respect its international commitments on the question of Western Sahara and to stop ''the strategy of fait accompli.''
"We still hope 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," declared Tuesday to the APS (Algeria Press Service) the Polisario Front representative at the UN, Mr. Ahmed Boukhari, on the eve of the eighth informal meeting which will bring together both parties July 20-21 in Manhasset (New York).
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."
Moreover, the Saharawi representative at the United Nations underlined that the UN Secretary General, Ban ki-Moon, had highlighted in his latest report on Western Sahara (April 2011), "the imperative to respect this sacred right to self-determination recognized since the 60's by all nations, like ours, who suffer from foreign domination. "
In this regard, Mr. Boukhari noted that the Polisario Front is "reinforced daily by the international consolidation and the merits of this path which is the right to self-determination, and this, as evidenced by the historic decision concerning the establishment of diplomatic relations between our country and the young Republic of Southern Sudan whose independence was the result of a peace plan based on the same principles of another plan developed by the former envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara (James Baker) and endorsed by the Security Council in 2003. "
Despite Moroccan attempts to prove otherwise in recent years, he said, "the facts demonstrate, once again, that the exercise of this right by the Saharawi people is the only feasible way and the only common denominator between the two parties and the UN to move forward towards a just, lasting and mutually beneficial to both brotherly peoples and neighbors." "We believe in it firmly," he asserted.
The Saharawi representative indicated, however, that the Polisario Front and the Saharawi people "can not but regret, once again, the pursuit by Morocco of a strategy of fait accompli in Western Sahara which is contrary to international law and, thus, which only adds additional obstacles to the ongoing efforts undertaken by the United Nations to conduct a long-awaited peace in the region and the entire international community."
Observing that the inclusion of the occupied territories of Western Sahara in the last referendum on constitutional reform of July 1, in Morocco is the latest example of this strategy of fait accompli, Mr. Bukhari said that this "frankly reached line of gratuitous provocation."
Accordingly, he considered that the Secretary General of the UN and the Security Council "are more than ever called upon to assume their responsibilities to protect the negotiation process of the harmful effects of a strategy that poses a serious challenge to its purpose."
On this point, he recalled that in a message to Mr. Ban Ki-Moon in June, the Saharawi President, Mohamed Abdelaziz, warned against the consequences of the inclusion of the occupied territories of Western Sahara in the referendum on constitutional reform in Morocco.
"The Western Sahara is not a Moroccan territory," the Saharawi president had asserted, specifying that it is listed by the UN as "a non-autonomous territory awaiting decolonization for more than 40 years." He called in this sense on the UN "to take all necessary measures to urge Morocco to abandon this decision which is a violation of internationally recognized borders and a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and resolutions and international law".
The eighth informal round between the Polisario Front and Morocco will be held under the auspices of the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross, attended by delegations of both parties and representatives of the two observer countries, Algeria and Mauritania.
Both parties had engaged in direct negotiations in June 2007 under the auspices of the UN, with four rounds that took place in Manhasset (USA), and seven informal meetings in Vienna (Austria), Valletta (Malta) and in Manhasset. (SPS)
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