Moroccan UN Envoy: Polisario Disqualified from Sahara Peace Talks, Says on CNN

The guest of the "Connect the World" program, hosted by CNN star presenter Becky Anderson, was peremptory: "When a party declares war and withdraws from the ceasefire, then it no longer has a place at the negotiating table. The polisario has simply disqualified itself from any participation in the political process," Omar Hilale hammered, reports La Map.

On the American channel, Ambassador Hilale recalled that it was indeed the polisario and its armed militias who were officially responsible for the tensions in the buffer zone of El Guerguerat in the Moroccan Sahara, where they brought, on October 21, women and children, in addition to armed elements, to block civilian and commercial traffic at this crossing point, shattering the ceasefire.

Despite this provocation, Mr. Hilale notes that Morocco refrained, at the request of the UN Secretary-General, from any action for several days. However, faced with the polisario’s refusal to heed the calls of the UN chief, and since "there is a time for diplomacy and a time for action," Morocco has assumed its responsibilities. Supported and backed by a large part of the international community, the Kingdom has conducted a civil engineering operation to restore civilian and commercial traffic at the El Guerguerat crossing point, he said, adding that this operation carried out by the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) was conducted in broad daylight and in the presence of UN observers, without causing any civilian casualties.

Furthermore, Mr. Hilale affirmed that "the instrument of the referendum in the Sahara is indeed dead and buried for more than two decades" and that "we cannot resurrect the dead." And to recall that "The Security Council makes no mention of the referendum in all its resolutions adopted over the past twenty years." According to the ambassador, there is only one political solution, namely broad autonomy under the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Morocco.

"The autonomy solution has, since its presentation, been described by the Security Council as serious and credible, and it has been discussed at the two round tables held under the leadership of former President Horst Köhler," Mr. Hilale stressed, adding that "within the framework of autonomy, anything is possible and outside of autonomy, nothing is."