Europe-based Sahrawis claim registration in referendum voter lists

The association of Europe-based Sahrawis has asked the United Nations to register all its members in the voter lists for the UN-projected referendum in the Sahara.

In a letter sent to the UN secretary general's special representative in the Sahara, William Eagleton, the association's chairman, Zini Idrissi Moulay El Mehdi, recalls that the association members who have all applied for registration have not to date been convoked.

The letter insists that the Europe-based Sahrawis are still waiting to exercise their inalienable right to be identified and asks Eagleton to inform UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Security Council of this situation and of their claims to be identified, in keeping with the UN decisions on identification criteria, dates and location.

The association, which represents Sahara-born Moroccans settled in European countries, also recalls that the secretary general had told the Security Council that Sahrawi tribes' members settled in Europe and elsewhere will be covered ulteriorly by the identification operation.

For the association, the request is all the more justified as the UN identification commission announced the completion of the identification process in Morocco, Mauritania and Tindouf camps and the start of the appeals procedure for the tribes identified, including those to whom the Polisario is denying the right to vote.

Last week, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan informed the Security Council of the impossibility to set with certainty a date for the referendum that has been put off several times since 1991, due to the electorate identification.

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.

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.