WESTERN SAHARA: Baker Announces Plans for New U.N. Talks

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations will host a fresh round of direct talks before month’s end between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front, a rebel movement which favours the independence of Western Sahara.

U.N. envoy James Baker, the former U.S. Secretary of State, announced in London Thursday that the talks are slated to begin in New York under U.N. auspices on Jun. 23, and should include not only officials from Morocco and Polisario but also representatives from neighbouring Mauritania and Algeria.

“I think at the very least there is some indication that the parties see this as the last best chance to get this (U.N.) plan implemented,” Baker said. Nevertheless, he argued, the U.N. “settlement plan” which has been the basis of a six-year peace process cannot be completed under present circumstances.

But he was upbeat that the long-stalled peace process can move ahead anew. “It is fair to say that we have the process back on track and we have demonstrations by the parties of good will and good faith that I think are meaningful demonstrations,” Baker said following two days of meetings with Moroccan and Polisario officials.

The United Nations has been aware for several years that the Sahara peace process is severely stalled. A U.N.-organised referendum that would determine the status of the formerly Spanish- held territory, that Morocco invaded in 1976 and annexed in 1980, has never been held.

Few diplomats here believe that the vote can ever be fairly conducted, with Morocco refusing to give up the phosphate-rich land and Polisario accusing King Hassan II’s government of trying to pre-determine the outcome of the referendum.

“The international community cannot continue to spend its scarce resources on the Western Sahara in the absence of any progress in the implementation of the plan that the two parties freely accepted nine years ago,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued in a recent report.

Many diplomats here agree. “The member states of the European Union are seriously concerned that the registration process for the long-awaited referendum … has come to a complete halt over the past 12 months,” Irish Ambassador Niall Holohan said late last year. The General Assembly, reflecting its own concern on the issue, last October suggested direct talks between the two parties.

The main snag is in the identification process by which the United Nations determines who among the nomadic Saharawi people is qualified to vote in the referendum. The two sides differ on how large the population of voters has become since the last Spanish census, conducted in 1974, counted more than 73,000 Saharawi.

At the time that the United Nations stopped voter identification in 1995, more than 77,000 qualifications had been reviewed and 60,000 eligible voters identified. But Morocco had also submitted the names of between 50,000 and 60,000 more potential voters, which led Polisario to accuse them of trying to stack the voter pool. Only following recent discussions with Baker has the Moroccan side agreed to set aside the larger pool of applicants for the time being.

For its part, the Polisario Front agreed to rejoin the identification process and cooperate with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in its work in refugee camps in the Sahara and in Algeria, Baker said.

“I think that is clear progress,” he said of the compromises the two sides have accepted in recent days.

Still, some doubts remain over whether the referendum, the basis for the U.N. peace effort, can ever be conducted fairly. One U.S. diplomat who had headed the voter identification drive, Frank Ruddy, has since resigned and accused Morocco of intimidating potential voters and dominating the U.N. process.

“This is not a poorly organised referendum,” said another U.N. official on condition of anonymity. “In fact, it is a well- organised referendum. It is just not being organised by the United Nations.”

Baker refused to say how much could be expected from talks in New York if Morocco and Polisario both agree to show up. He only characterised the talks as private discussions, rather than as an international conference, and said that Mauritania — which abandoned its own claim to Western Sahara in 1980 — and Algeria, Polisario’s main ally, would “be brought into the room where their interests are directly involved.”

But the progress of the referendum will be hard to achieve, and an alternative to the referendum that would satisfy both sides is difficult to imagine. Baker said neither side is willing to consider limited autonomy for Western Sahara, while Polisario has been equally blunt that the status quo, with Morocco controlling most of the land with a minimal force of U.N. peacekeepers also stationed, is unacceptable.

“A cease-fire with no prospect of the peace plan being transparently and credibly applied is not an acceptable solution, either to the Saharawi people or to the United Nations, since it would imply the perpetuation of a colonial fait accompli under the protection of the (U.N.) blue helmets,” Bokhari Ahmed, Polisario’s U.N. representative, has argued.