Polisario Front Slams France’s Support for Morocco’s Sahara Plan

The Polisario Front accuses France of "explicitly supporting" the Moroccan "occupation" of the Sahara. In a statement relayed by the SPS news agency, the separatist movement condemned "the tendency of certain powers, including permanent members of the UN Security Council, to undermine the peace agreements and to depart from international legality with regard to the conflict in Western Sahara".

The Polisario Front denounced these "attempts to undermine the peace efforts to resolve the conflict through the recent positions expressed by certain countries", dwelling on the case of France which has "explicitly supported the policies of occupation, annexation and absorption applied by the Moroccan regime". For the separatist movement, no "just" and "definitive" solution to the Sahara conflict "can be imagined outside a realistic and credible legal framework".

The Polisario has called for the holding of a "free and fair" referendum in which "the Sahrawi people would decide on the final status of their land, Western Sahara". In this sense, it has thanked the "friendly and brotherly countries" including Algeria, who support the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination, reiterating its willingness to "contribute positively" and to "cooperate" to achieve "a just and lasting peace" and "create a climate of coexistence and integration between their countries and their peoples".

This statement comes nearly two weeks after King Mohammed VI’s Green March speech, in which he stated that the referendum was "inapplicable" and invited the United Nations to "assume its responsibilities" on this issue. "There is a growing international recognition in favor of the Moroccanness of the Sahara, in addition to the broad support for the autonomy initiative," the monarch added, noting that "parallel to this legal situation, there is, unfortunately, another world separated from the truth that still lives on the illusions of the past," referring to the Polisario Front.