Large autonomy would help settle Sahara dispute, former UN official

Former chief of the UN mission in the Sahara, Erik Jensen has suggested that the three-decade long Sahara dispute opposing Morocco to Algeria-backed separatist movement "Polisario" could be settled through granting a large autonomy to these Moroccan Southern Provinces.

Speaking at a meeting hosted, Wednesday, by the International Peace Academy in new York, Erik Jensen who led the United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara - known by its French acronym "MINURSO"- said it's high time to find a negotiated political solution to the Sahara conflict. Morocco retrieved the former Spanish colony in 1975 under the Madrid Accords it signed with Spain and Mauritania. However, the Polisario front, backed by neighbouring Algeria, has been claiming the separation of these Provinces from the rest of the Kingdom.

Jensen who spoke about changes at the international level, citing in particular the end of the Cold War, said that the more time passed, the more difficult it became to carry out a referendum in the Moroccan Sahara.

He noted that initiatives undertaken by the UN to settle this dispute, "have led to nothing so far," suggesting in this regard, that the granting of a large autonomy to the Sahara provinces, would help settle this issue and contribute to the rise of the a Maghreb entity.

Erik Jensen also underlined the suffering endured by the population "living in the refugee camps," in an allusion to thousands of Moroccan-Sahara natives held against their will by the Polisario in the Tindouf Camps, south-western Algeria. He warned that "the young generations who grew up there may not know anything else but those camps."

During the meeting, the audience was handed a copy of Jensen's new book on the Sahara "Anatomy of a Stalemate."