U.N. Secretary General Proposes Four Options to Settle Sahara Issue

UN Secretary general, Kofi Annan, recommended on Tuesday to the security council to extend by an addition 2 months the MINURSO mandate in order to have enough time to make a decision on the four options he proposes to settle the Sahara issue.

In his reports presented Tuesday, the secretary general proposes four options: the first is to implement the settlement plan, the second will be to revise the framework agreement, the third deals with partitioning the territory and the fourth proposes the end of the MINURSO mission.

In his observations and recommendations, Annan notes regarding the third option, which is the partitioning of the territory, that his personal envoy, James Baker, sees that even though Algeria and the separatists support a potential partitioning of the territory, it would be useless to carry on for the moment such discussions (.) since Morocco refused to discuss this approach.