New York, October 11, 2016 (SPS) - Algeria’s permanent representative to the UN Sabri Boukadoum called on Monday in New York for the resumption of talks between the Polisario Front and Morocco to end the stalemate in the UN peace process.
Following the debate of the UN Fourth Committee on Special Political and Decolonization, the Algerian representative said that the Sahrawi question is still "deadlocked" and "there are attempts to take over the peace process."
"The main fact is that last year did not see any positive progress and the absence of positive progress is not a good sign," he told the Committee short before the adoption of a resolution on Western Sahara, reaffirming Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.
"My message is simple: let’s start with what was requested in the Security Council Resolution 2285 in 2016; namely the holding of a fifth round of negotiations between the two parties," added Boukadoum, noting that the international community should support UN envoy, Christopher Ross, to help revive the negotiation process stopped in 2012.
"Ross is facing many obstacles, hampering him to fulfill his commitment to visit the region so to revive the talks," he noted.
"Recent history has shown that barriers to peaceful solutions never allowed to achieve peace," stressed Boukadoum, stating that the situation in the occupied territories is "worrying" and could lead to "an increasingly uncertain future."
Algeria’s representative said that "Western Sahara conflict, Africa’s last colony, can only be settled by ensuring the Sahrawi people’s inalienable right to self-determination in line within Resolution 1514."
"The principle of self-determination referendum is a decision approved by the United Nations and also a compromise that has already been negotiated and accepted by both parties to the conflict," he pointed out.
The terrorist threats and drug trafficking cited by some speakers as a consequence of the situation in Western Sahara, "should instead create an additional incentive to resolve this conflict," Boukadoum stressed.
The representative added that "Algeria supports the Committee decision to hold a special session on Western Sahara and urges its members to take due account of the Moroccan colonization of those territories.”SPS
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