Former UN Envoy Urges Security Council to Press Morocco on Western Sahara Negotiations

The Security Council "must convince Morocco to negotiate without preconditions and to engage on the Polisario’s proposal on a reciprocal basis," said the former personal envoy of the Secretary-General for the Sahara (2009-2017) in a long message on his Facebook page. According to him, the kingdom "ignores the Council’s call to avoid preconditions in the negotiations, its call to consider the Polisario’s proposal and its call to allow MINURSO to freely access all interlocutors in its area of operations." In short, he is once again aligning himself with the Polisario, which is demanding the independence of the Sahara through a self-determination referendum.

Christopher Ross also proposes the solution that, according to him, could definitively settle the Sahara issue. "The only way for (Staffan) De Mistura (the current UN envoy) to hope to break the deadlock is for the Council to give him a broader mandate, similar to that of James Baker (1997 to 2004). If his mandate is to be limited to shuttling from one place to another and organizing meetings of the parties, as was the case for his three predecessors, he will have to face the same difficulties as them."