UN security council extends mandate of UN mission in Sahara

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted on Tuesday a resolution extending for an additional three months, until next May 31, the mandate of MINURSO (UN mission supervising the referendum in the Sahara).

The council also supported the UN secretary general's intention to ask his personal envoy for the Sahara, James Baker, to consult the parties and explore ways and means to achieve an early, lasting and agreed resolution of the conflict.

The resolution was adopted following a report by UN Secretary general Kofi Annan, who recommended the three-month extension and stated 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 there seemed "little possibility of holding the referendum before 2002 or even beyond."

He cited the electorate identification as the particularly-hard problem that could make it impossible to hold a referendum, provided for by the UN settlement plan. Annan said 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 would be finalized. The second list was expected to be finalized by February 25.

Reacting to the resolution, Morocco's permanent delegate to the UN, Ahmed Snoussi, said that Morocco had expressed the same concerns over difficulties hampering the UN settlement plan enforcement as the secretary general's concerns and that these concerns were endorsed by the security council.

For Morocco, the UN secretary general's special envoy will have to see to it that persons who were not included in the voter lists enjoy their right of appeal without having to go through the testimony of representatives and heads of tribes of the other side. Morocco rejects as illegal the recourse to the testimony of the other side representative in the appeals procedure, he said.

Baker's task will also be to push forward the problem of populations who have been sequestered for over 25 years and who do not enjoy the appropriate conditions to express their will. These refugees have been identified and should, therefore, be repatriated to their homeland while their jailers are keeping them hostages to use them in bargaining and in getting more humanitarian aid, said Snoussi.

The Moroccan diplomat further renewed Morocco's adherence to the UN settlement plan as long as its spirit and conditions agreed upon are respected. He insisted that the plan, which is actually the referendum charter, was devised to allow for a democratic voting rather than depriving more than half of the population of their right to express their will.

For Morocco, Baker will be undertaking a consultation mission and also assessing chances and prospects of success. No doubt that the former US secretary of state enjoys the needed qualities to fulfill his mission and Morocco is certain that he will be up to this complex and difficult task, said Morocco's delegate to the UN in New York.

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 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 had been supervising arrangements for the referendum.