AFP Misrepresents Guterres' Statements About Western Sahara

Rabat – The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on all the parties involved in the Western Sahara conflict to have “a stronger interest” in resolving the conflict, a statement which the AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported inaccurately.

The agency misconstrued Guterres’s statement as citing “both sides” of the conflict, referring to Morocco and the Polisario, when his statement encompassed other countries and parties involved in the conflict, mainly Algeria and Mauritania.

The misleading report perpetrates the narrative that the Western Sahara issue only concerns Morocco and the separatist Polisario Front, when it is in fact a much more complex topic with several more actors, including Algeria and Mauritania.

The misreporting on AFP’s part signals a clear bias against Morocco on the subject, as other actors such as Algeria want the international understanding of the conflict to be based on the false premise that it only involves Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario

Contrary to AFP’s report, Guterres did not mention that there were two sides and he did not name Morocco and the Polisario, as can be seen in the video available on YouTube.

AFP’s misreporting could be attributed to a desire to pressure Morocco. This is also not the first time that the French news agency has been accused of displaying biases against Morocco, with critics pointing out such faults as recently as last year.

Guterres’s statement came in response to a question about the UN Envoy to Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura’s first visit to the region.

“It is time for the parties to understand the need for a dialogue which seeks to achieve a solution and not simply to maintain an indefinite process underway without there being a definite meaningful resolution,” Guterres said in the press conference held on Friday.

Further contradicting AFP’s biased reporting is that De Mistura’s visit to the region included Algeria and Mauritania in addition to Morocco and the Polisario.

De Mistura’s visit saw him meeting leaders from all the involved parties. During the meetings, the UN envoy called for achieving a “realistic, practicable, enduring and mutually acceptable political solution to the question of Western Sahara based on compromise,” as laid out in Security Council Resolution 2602 adopted last October.

He also cited the tensions between Algeria and Morocco as a focus of the visit, with the spokesman pointing out that the situation needs to be resolved as part of the Western Sahara issue.

While Algeria has long sought to cast itself as an “observer state” with no direct stakes in the Sahara conflict, all the recent UN resolutions about the disputed region suggest otherwise.

In addition to consistently calling on all the four parties — Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and Polisario — to commit to the UN-led process, the UN resolutions since 2018 have once and for all established the centrality of Algeria as a key party to the conflict.

Since Resolution 2440 which was adopted in October 2018, the UN has consistently named Algeria as a central player in the conflict.

While that resolution mentioned Algeria three times as a neighboring state, future resolutions such as Resolution 2468 put Algeria and Mauritania on equal footing with Morocco and Polisario, and mentioned Algeria even more.

Resolution 2468 also marked the start of the UN emphasis on compromise and realism as the basis for potential diplomatic solutions to the conflict.

Security Council Resolution 2602, which was adopted last year, reiterated previous Security Council resolutions by recalling that the Sahara question can only be resolved if all the four parties to conflict show genuine commitment to the UN-led process of compromise-based dialogue.

As it supports the past UN resolutions and stresses the importance of following the parameters that the organization set in 2007 with the start of the political process, the latest UN resolution was met with rejection from Algeria and the Polisario.

With most observers and diplomats pointing to the need for a workable and realistic solution in line with Morocco’s Autonomy Plan, the dismissal of the UN consensus by Polisario and Algeria signals their desire to sabotage the UN-led diplomatic process in hopes of forcing the UN into rehabilitating the disqualified self-determination referendum.