Meknes – Ahead of the coming UN Security Council (UNSC) discussions on Western Sahara, Amar Belani, Algeria’s special envoy in charge of the Western Sahara and Maghreb countries, raised doubts about the prospects of the UN-led political process when he told Algerian state media earlier this week that Algeria has “publicly rejected” the roundtable format because it has “become unproductive.”
Belani’s comments appeared to be a direct rejoinder to the UN’s calls on all stakeholders in the Western Sahara conflict to renew their commitment to the UN-led political process and facilitate the organization of roundtable negotiations.
The Algeria diplomat spoke of his country’s “formal and irreversible rejection” of the roundtables, adding the Algerian government has notified its “permanent representative in New York” to transfer its position to the “Security Council” and circulate “the note in question to all members of the [UN Security] Council.”
Following the recent appointment of Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan De Mistura as the UN Secretary General’s new special envoy for Western Sahara, Switzerland approached Morocco and the Polisario through diplomatic channels to express its willingness to hold new Geneva roundtables, Maghreb Intelligence reported on October 22.
Currently, the UN Security Council (UNSC) is considering an umpteenth resolution on Western Sahara. The council is set to adopt, at the end of this month, yet another resolution that most observers expect to be similar in language and recommendations to the latest, post-2007 resolutions that have all called for political realism and pragmatic compromise as the best way out of the Western Sahara quagmire.
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Morocco has repeatedly urged Algeria to shoulder its “historical responsibility” in the decades-long conflict. From Morocco’s perspective, its eastern neighbor has a long history of spreading false information about the Western Sahara issue to challenge the kingdom’s territorial integrity.
In September, Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the UN stated the North African kingdom “has solemnly reaffirmed” its constant position for “autonomy, nothing but autonomy” as a solution to the Western Sahara dispute.
He recalled that a compromise-based political solution was the only alternative that Morocco proposed “during the two previous round tables in Geneva, in the presence of Algerian ministers Lamssahel, then Lamamra.”
The appointment of De Mistura comes after a two-year deadlock in the UN-led political process following Horst Kohler’s sudden resignation in May 2019. Because Kohler’s tenure had helped revive some kind of “new momentum” around the UN-led process in Western Sahara, his resignation left a critical void that urgently needed to be filled to salvage whatever was left of the appeal of the UN-moderated political process.
UN diplomats and many observers appear to put much hope on the recent appointment of the new personal envoy for Western Sahara.
But Algeria’s rejection of Geneva roundtables-like negotiations is set to amplify lingering doubts about whether De Mistura can give new life to the “new momentum” and eventually convince the conflicting parties to commit to a political solution.
