Morocco wants free and transparent referendum in Sahara

Morocco renewed on Monday attachment to a free and transparent referendum in the Sahara.

Morocco wants a free and transparent referendum in the Sahara, Moroccan permanent representative to the United Nations, Ahmed Snoussi, told the General Assembly's 4th commission in charge of special political issues and decolonization.

"A genuine democratic approach of the referendum should be adopted and abandon the old ideas, and allow each candidate to present themselves to justify his candidacy," Snoussi said.

A much-delayed self-determination referendum is to be held in the Sahara, probably early next year, to decide whether the former Spanish colony, retrieved by Morocco in 1975, sets up on its own or be definitively incorporated into Morocco.

Snoussi surveyed the various stages covered by Morocco for the completion of its independence and the recovery of its spoiled territories.

"For those who perfectly know the history of the region, the case is an issue of territorial integrity," the diplomat said.

He recalled that Morocco proposed the holding of a referendum in its southern provinces to show its good intentions.

Touching on the identification issue which has so far been one of the major stumbling blocks towards the holding of the referendum, Snoussi said "the essence of the (U.N. settlement) plan (for the Sahara) resides in the identification criteria which explicitly recognize the right of all Sahrawis, who were not covered by the (1974 Spanish) census, to be identified."

The identification of would be voters in the referendum which resumed at the end of 1997 after almost two years of suspension, has been hampered by the Polisario' attempts to shrink the voters' lists.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a recent report that with the registration of 147,000 applicants, the identification process was completed except for the members of three contested tribal groupings, H41, H61 and J51/52.

In order to break the ice, Annan assigned his personal envoy for the Sahara, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, to broker a meeting shortly in Lisbon (Portugal) between Morocco and the Polisario.

The meeting will try to reach a compromise between the two sides on the issue of tribes to whom the Polisario is denying the right to take part in the referendum.

Ahmed Snoussi wondered on the position of the Polisario and its godfathers, who used to claim that the Sahrawi population is much larger than the number found out by the Spanish census, and is now trying to shrink the size of the electorate. "Isn't it surprising that those who advocated that the Sahrawi population is much larger than figures of the 1974 Spanish census are today trying to limit participation in the referendum to the population covered by the census only, and discarding tens of thousands of Sahrawis?," he said.