Morocco ready for negotiations on 'viable, appropriate autonomy' for Sahara, official
Morocco-Algeria, Politics, 10/30/2004

The Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations on Thursday voiced the government's readiness to participate in any negotiation on what he described as "a viable and appropriate autonomy" for its Southern provinces, known as the Sahara.

"The Kingdom of Morocco reiterates its readiness to participate in negotiations, under the auspices of the (UN) Secretary General's special representative (to the Sahara), in order to work out the status of a viable and appropriate autonomy" for the Sahara, said Mohamed Bennouna in reaction to the six month extension by the Security Council of the Mandate of the UN Mission for the Sahara, known by its French acronym MINURSO.

"We will thus put an end to a regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara et we will pave the way for the construction of a united and prosperous Maghreb," the diplomat said in an allusion to the dispute over the former Spanish colony that has been opposing since 1976 Morocco to the Algeria-backed separatist movement "Polisario." Morocco retrieved this territory in 1975 under the Madrid Accords signed with the former colonial power and Mauritania.

The Sahara dispute has been hampering the construction of the North African regional grouping known as the Maghreb Arab Union mustering Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania. Set up in 1989, the Union, known by its French acronym UMA, ambitions to become something like the European Union but due to divergences in particular between the two main populated countries Morocco and Algeria over the Sahara, the Union is still at a stalemate.

The Security Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the MINURSO through April 30, 2005, and asking UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to report further on the possibility of reducing the size of the mission.

The Council urged parties and states of the region to carry on their cooperation with the United Nations to overcome the current deadlock and progress towards a political solution.

It also reaffirmed its will to help the parties achieve "a just, lasting and mutually acceptable solution.."

In his reaction, the Moroccan Ambassador deemed that, through its new resolution extending the MINURSO mandate, the Security Council "clearly asks the parties and states of the region to progress towards a political solution and to seek an alternative to the second Baker (peace) Plan," drafted by the former US Secretary of State James Baker who resigned recently from his post of Annan's personal envoy to the Sahara.

He said "irreconcilable positions vis-a-vis the second Baker Plan are to be blamed for the current deadlock."

The diplomat insisted that any political and consensus-based solution to the Sahara dispute "must care for Morocco's inalienable right to preserve its territorial integrity and allow the populations to manage their own local affairs through democratic institutions elected by all inhabitants and former inhabitants of the Moroccan Sahara."

Previous Stories:
  Morocco 'firm and unshakable' in defending its territorial integrity, minister   (10/29/2004)
  Former Algerian president sought to overcome conflict with Morocco on Sahara   (10/29/2004)
  No negotiation on Moroccan kingty over Sahara, party   (10/26/2004)

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