WESTERN SAHARA: Pro-Independence Front Leery of UN Proposal

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 20 2000 (IPS) - Negotiations on the disputed Western Sahara continue down a winding road that most likely will lead to a referendum, but now face a possible detour down a different route, one suggested by United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Since 1991, after 16 years of armed hostilities between Morocco and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front), the UN drafted a peace plan based on the premise of a referendum that would decide the future of the contested territory.

The process of organising the referendum has been delayed since then due to difficulties in identifying the true inhabitants of the disputed region, who are to vote either for independence as the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) or to legitimise the dominion of Morocco over the area.

A UN commission began five years ago to register the citizens it could identify as Saharawis, or residents of the Western Sahara, which lies on the northwest African coast south of Morocco, with Algeria to the east and Mauritania to the south.

After interviewing some 198,000 people, the commission found that only 96,000 met all the requirements for participating in the referendum, according to sources from the Polisario Front.

Morocco has asked the UN commission to reconsider the cases of people who were initially excluded from the voter lists, and to include the natives of the region in dispute who reached voting age after December 1993, when the registration process began.

But the Polisario Front charges that Morocco is stirring up the issue of those excluded because “it knows it is going to lose the referendum.”

The people the UN team decided could not take part in the referendum must present proof of their identity as Saharawis, “but they don’t have it,” affirmed Mohamed Khaddad, liaison between the Polisario Front and the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

The Polisario Front’s interpretation implies that Morocco intends to abandon the peace plan and seek an alternative solution because it is likely to face defeat in a referendum.

The latest report Annan presented before the UN Security Council, on July 12, outlines potential solutions to the dispute: “a negotiated agreement for full integration with Morocco; a negotiated agreement for full independence; a negotiated agreement for something in between; or a negotiated agreement that would permit a successful implementation of the settlement plan.”

But the UN secretary-general warned that the stances of the two parties in the conflict “do not augur well” for a favourable outcome in applying any peace plan.

Polisario Front leaders criticised the new “in between” alternatives Annan put forth, expressing doubts as to the sincerity of the UN and its political will to implement the process.

Saharawi sources maintained that the US and French governments back Morocco and are pressuring the Security Council to find an alternative that favours Rabat.

The Polisario Front, meanwhile, counts mostly on backing from Algeria and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Some 165,000 refugees have lived in the vicinity of Tinduf, a city in southwestern Algeria, since they fled Western Sahara in 1975.

The support of France, the United States and other industrialised countries for Morocco is based on their concern that the stability of the Moroccan monarchy is experiencing a difficult transition following the death of King Hassan II and the succession of his son, Mohamed VI, to the throne, say political observers.

But Polisario leaders point to the case of East Timor, which held a referendum – also with UN help – to decide its independence.

The self-determination of East Timor did not affect the political stability of Indonesia, maintained Khaddad, who took part this week in a UN-sponsored meeting in Geneva with Moroccan delegates to discuss the issues that stand in the way of implementing the peace plan.

Annan had told the UN Security Council earlier this month that “arriving at a political solution is far more preferable than a breakdown of the process, which might lead to a return to hostilities, something that must be avoided at all costs.”