Western Sahara 'needs time'

2004-04-28 13:51

New York - Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council not to give up on the peace process in Western Sahara.

Annan recommended that the 15-nation council extend the UN peacekeeping mandate in mineral-rich Western Sahara for 10 months to give the sides more time to work with each other. But a draft resolution circulated to council members on Tuesday would only extend the mission for six months.

The plan, drafted by former US Secretary of State James Baker, would give Western Sahara immediate self-government and schedule a referendum for within five years to decide if the desert territory on Africa's Atlantic coast should be independent or part of Morocco.

"It is my view and that of my personal envoy that the peace plan still constitutes the best political solution to the conflict," the secretary-general said in a report to the council.

Baker has been working for seven years as Annan's personal envoy trying unsuccessfully to negotiate an end to the dispute between the Polisario Front rebel movement and Morocco, which both claim the region.

The Polisario Front has accepted the plan, but Morocco has rejected it.

Annan said the Security Council had to choose whether to terminate the peacekeeping force known as Minurso and return the issue to the General Assembly. "thereby recognising and acknowledging that, after the passage of more than 13 years and the expenditure of more than $600m, the United Nations was not going to solve the problem."

Try again

"Option two would be to try once again to get the parties to work towards acceptance and implementation of the peace plan," he said.

In a letter to Baker earlier this month, Morocco expressed a willingness to work toward a political solution but insisted on autonomy for the region, saying the Western Saharan people would manage their own local affairs but would no longer have the options of self-determination or independence.

The draft resolution, which would extend the UN peacekeeping mission until October 31, would reaffirm the council's commitment to reaching a "just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara."

The latest mandate for the peacekeeping force, which has nearly 230 UN military observers and troops, expires on Friday. No date was set for a vote on the resolution.

Western Sahara's Spanish colonisers left the territory in 1975, and Morocco and Mauritania split it. Full-scale war broke out the following year, and Morocco took over the whole of Western Sahara after Mauritania pulled out in 1979.

About 200 000 local Saharawi people fled into exile and still live in refugee camps in Algeria.

The fighting, which pitted 15 000 Polisario guerrillas against Morocco's US-equipped army, ended in 1991 with a UN-negotiated cease-fire that called for a referendum on the region's fate.

- AP