Baker in Morocco to unlock Sahara Logjam
Morocco, Politics, 4/10/2000

Personal envoy of the U.N. secretary-general for the Sahara, James Baker, said Sunday in Rabat that he is touring the region to study means to overcome the obstacles facing the U.N. settlement plan for the Sahara.

"I am making a round through the region to see if there are any steps that can be taken to resolve these problems," Baker told the press upon arrival in Rabat Sunday.

He added that his objective is to reach "a settlement or an arrangement that would promote peace and stability within this region and permit the extension of further unity within the Maghreb."

Baker, who termed as "difficult, serious and complicated" the obstacles hampering the U.N. settlement plan, voiced wish that his present tour would help settle these problems.

Touching on a new possible approach to the Sahara issue, the former US secretary of state said he just came to listen to the parties. "My only thought is that if there is a way to implement the plan, we should do so. And if there is not, we should not give up. We should see if there are other approaches that can be taken to resolve the issue finally and satisfactorily."

Rabat is the second leg of Baker's tour in the region. He already visited Algeria and the Tindouf camps (south-western Algeria). After Rabat, he will visit Mauritania before going back to Washington via Madrid and Paris.

Baker was asked by secretary general, Kofi Annan, to resume mediation to pull out the plan from the deadlock in which it is plunged by the Polisario's refusal to register thousands of genuine Sahrawis in the rolls of the projected self-determination referendum in the Sahara.

The Algeria-backed Polisario secessionist movement is trying to shrink the electorate by insisting that only persons who were included in a population census conducted by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1974 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 February report to the security council 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:
  Morocco expects baker assignment to speed up referendum   (4/8/2000)
  Baker starts north African tour   (4/8/2000)
  Morocco renews attachment to Sahara settlement plan   (4/6/2000)

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