Baker starts north African tour
Algeria-Morocco, Politics, 4/8/2000

James Baker, personal envoy of the U.N. Secretary-General for the Sahara, arrived this Saturday in Algiers, first leg of a North African tour, meant to revive the stalled settlement plan for the Sahara.

Baker, former US Secretary of State, told the press upon arrival that he came "to listen to the different parties involved in the conflict and to revive the peace process in the Sahara."

The envoy said he was upbeat over the prospects to find a solution to the Sahara issue.

In a report to the Security Council last February, U.N secretary general, Kofi Annan, had asked Baker to resume mediation to pull out the plan from deadlock.

The UN settlement plan came to a standstill in view of the Polisario's refusal to register thousands of genuine Sahrawis in the rolls of the projected self-determination referendum in the Sahara.

"I intend to ask my personal envoy, James Baker III, to consult with the parties and "to explore ways and means to achieve an early, durable and agreed resolution of their dispute, which would define their respective rights and obligations in Western Sahara," Annan wrote in the report.

The Algeria-backed Polisario secessionist movement is trying to shrink the electorate, insisting that only persons who were included in a population census conducted by the Spanish colonial authorities should be entitled to vote, while Morocco says all persons of Sahrawi origin, an essentially nomadic population, should be allowed to vote.

The referendum seeks to determine whether the Sahara --a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid accords-- sets up on its own or remains part of Morocco.

Annan said in his report that he couldn't set with certainty a date for the referendum that has been put off several times since 1991. In a previous report last December, the UN chief had already hinted that there seemed "little possibility of holding the referendum before 2002 or even beyond."

He pinpointed to the electorate identification as the particularly-hard problem that could make it impossible to hold a referendum, provided for by the UN settlement plan.

Previous Stories:
  Mahfud Nahnah wants Moroccan-Algerian relations back to normal   (3/2/2000)
  Algerian president receives Moroccan speaker   (2/22/2000)
  Moroccan premier says Sahara issue was no obstacle to normal relations between Morocco, Algeria   (2/21/2000)

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