Moroccan requires UNO to restore rights of voters accepted, then rejected

Morocco requests that candidates accepted by the UN identification commission as voters in the UN-projected referendum in the Sahara and then rejected by a revision commission be restored in their right to be included in the voter rolls, MAP reported.

Morocco's permanent delegate to the UN, Ahmed Snoussi, wrote to UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, a letter expressing Morocco's protest at Annan's latest report on the situation in the Sahara. The report, the letter says, does not truthfully reflect Morocco's position on the revision of the identification results.

Morocco insists the problem concerns (7,000) candidates about whom Morocco was informed that they have been accepted as voters and then dismissed following an illegal revision procedure that is not stipulated in any text regulating the referendum process.

The letter says "in paragraph 5 (of Annan's report), it is claimed that Morocco cited, among the obstacles hampering the referendum process, the cancellation of the identification operation results for some 7,000 applicants who should, Morocco says, be re-included in the lists."

Actually, Morocco explains that it was not requesting, although it had good reasons to do so, the cancellation of the identification results but asked that candidates accepted as voters by the identification centers which officially published the lists, and then rejected by a revision commission, be restored in their right and re-included in the voter lists.

Morocco further notes that there is no legal text that provides for the procedure of a revision commission.

Annan has made the remarks last week in a report to the UN security council. He also recommended a three-month extension of the mandate of MINURSO (French acronym for the UN mission in charge of supervising a referendum in the Sahara). The MINURSO mandate will expire this July 31.

Annan stresses that despite efforts by his special envoy, James Baker III, there had been "no progress" during the June 28 meeting in London in resolving any of the multiple problems impeding the implementation of the settlement plan. He also argued that "a political solution was far more preferable than a breakdown of the process which might lead to a return to hostilities."

Annan expressed the hope that the upcoming expert-level meetings in Geneva (this July 21-22) would yield progress. The Secretary-General's Personal Envoy is expected to meet again with the parties in the presence of the two observer countries, Algeria and Mauritania, to try "once again" to resolve the problems relating to the settlement plan and agree on a political solution to the dispute, according to the report.

The United Nations Organization has been trying since 1990 to hold a referendum to give populations of the Sahara, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975, a chance to say whether they want the territory to remain Moroccan or stand up on its own as claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario movement.