UN chief recommends extension of UN Sahara mission term, calls special envoy to resume mediation
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended the Security Council to extend for an additional three months the term of the UN mission in the Sahara and asked his special envoy, James Baker, to resume mediation to end the conflict.
"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 a report released last Friday.
Annan added that he can'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.
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 should be entitled to vote, while Morocco says all persons of Sahrawi origin, an essentially nomadic population, should be allowed to vote.
Since 79,000 appeals have been lodged when the first part of the voter provisional lists was published, the MINURSO should expect an additional 60,000 appeals when the second list of persons eligible to vote will be finalized on February 25 at the latest.
He added that the two parties' stand is no positive sign that the admissibility of appeals will be rapidly settled and therefore the timetable schedule does no longer serve to anything.
The Sahara is a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid accord. After a cease-fire observed in the region since 1991, the MINURSO, French acronym for the UN mission in the Sahara, had been supervising arrangements for the referendum.
