Istiqlal party rejects results of UN identification operation in Sahara
Morocco, Politics, 1/25/2000

The Istiqlal Party, a member of the leftist-led coalition government, rejected results released last week by the UN identification commission regarding the eligibility of members of three contested tribes.

The nationalist party, which held on Saturday a meeting of its central committee, said Morocco cannot accept that only 4% of three tribes-- to whom the Polisario is denying the right to vote-- would be actually admitted as voters in the UN-projected referendum in the Sahara.

The Sahara tribes are a non-dividable entity. It is unacceptable that within the same tribe, some members be declared eligible and other ineligible, especially after it became clear that the errors of the identification commission seek to harm Morocco, the party said. It cited as an example past results which admitted some individuals and rejected others from the same family.

The Istiqlal Party's central committee, which insists on the links between the Sahara's tribes and Morocco, rejects the partiality of the UN identification commission and considers it as not committing for Morocco. It says that the UN identification commission cannot be retained as a basis and that the referendum cannot be held unless the participation of all population of the Sahara without exception is guaranteed.Excluding a single Sahara-born individual will void the referendum of its essence and will make it unapplicable, it said.

In an address before the central committee, the party's secretary general, Abbas El Fassi, accused the MINURSO, French acronym for the UN mission supervising the holding of referendum in the Sahara, of siding with the Polisario separatists to deprive most of Sahrawis of their legitimate right to cast their vote. He also called Algeria, which supports the Polisario, to cease opposing Morocco's right to perfect its territorial integrity and hampering the return of populations sequestered in the Tindouf camps (southwestern Algeria) to their homeland.

The party leader, who rejoiced at the exclusion of the so-called SADR (self-proclaimed Sahrawi republic) from the Euro-African summit slated for next April in Cairo, called the Organization of African Unity to rescind the membership of the self-proclaimed republic. He added that the party refuses that the organization be associated to the referendum process as long as it maintains the anachronic membership of the so-called Sahrawi republic.

Last week, the United Nations published the second part of the voter list which included 2,130 eligible voters from the more than 50,000 applicants from contested tribes.

The first provisional voter lists published by the United Nations last July, covering the two first identification stages (from Aug. 94 to Dec. 95 and from Dec. 97 to Sep. 98) included some 84,251 found to be entitled to vote in the referendum.

Morocco, which expressed astonishment and disappointment at last week's identification results, insists that all Sahrawis should be entitled to participate in the referendum.

The referendum will determine whether the Sahara, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid accords, should remain Moroccan territory or set up on its own.

Previous Stories:
  Moroccan representatives worried over results of UN identification in sahar   (1/20/2000)
  Morocco calls applicants to identification to follow up their applications   (1/19/2000)
  Morocco astonished and disappointed about identification in sahara   (1/18/2000)

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