Ninth Informal talks on the Sahara to be Held in New York in February

Morocco World News

New York, January 18, 2012

“The next round of informal talks will be held in early February in the Green tree property in the suburbs of New York,” Deputy spokesperson of the UN, Vannina Maestracci, told reporters on Tuesday without specifying the exact date of the meeting.

Over the past two years, Morocco and the Polisario have held 8 informal rounds of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy, Christopher Ross. The last round of negotiations was held in July in New York. All of these negotiations have ended without any progress.

In April 2007, Morocco presented an Autonomy Plan that was described as “serious and credible” by the Security Council. The said plan proposes significant autonomy for the Sahara with a local government and a parliament, within the Moroccan sovereignty.

The Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, rejects the Moroccan plan and claims the people of the Sahara have a right to self-determination through a referendum.

Many analysts voice their concern that the current informal negotiations over the future of the Sahara are leading nowhere and that the Security Council ought to adopt a new approach in order to put an end to this long-lasting dispute.

Over the past decade, many observers have stated that an independent Saharawi State cannot be envisaged as a “realistic option”. This was the message conveyed by the spokesman of the American Department of State on April 30th 2008 before the UN Security Council, on the occasion of the vote of resolution S/RES/1813. Similarly, in an interview given to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the former Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the Sahara, Peter Walsum, stated that the establishment of a Sahrawi State is not an “accessible objective”.

Back in 2000, in his report to the Security Council on the Situation in the Sahara (S/2000/461) Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations, stated that it is essential that the parties be “prepared to consider other ways of achieving an early, durable and agreed resolution” over their dispute over the Sahara.