UNITED NATIONS, 11 August 2007 — Morocco and the Polisario independence movement met for a second round of negotiations on their 32-year-long dispute over Western Sahara yesterday, two months after resuming landmark talks.
The two sides held their first face-to-face talks in at least seven years in June, but the meeting failed to provide a breakthrough in their long-standing disagreements and ended with both sides calling for the other to compromise.
The talks focus on the status of the North African territory. The Polisario wants a referendum offering full autonomy or independence, while Rabat has so far only been willing to offer limited autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
The second round of talks was, like the first, being hosted by UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s envoy for Western Sahara, Peter Van Walsum, in Manhasset, just east of New York City. They were due to last two days, UN officials said.
Representatives from Algeria and Mauritania as well as members of the Group of Friends of Western Sahara — Britain, France, Russia, Spain and the United States — were also invited to attend as observers.
Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa, who led Rabat’s delegation in the June round, said after those talks that the Polisario had yet to make concessions to respond to an autonomy proposal Rabat made in April.
Another member of the Moroccan delegation, Khelli Hanna Ould Errachid, president of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs, called on the Polisario to make greater concessions to help break the impasse.
“What we need is concessions, patience, dialogue and renunciation of dogmatism,” Errachid said. “Morocco has given up total integration (of Western Sahara) and we expect the other party to give up full independence.”
Mahfoud Ali Beiba, who headed the Polisario delegation, reasserted the organization’s aim to achieve full self-determination for Western Sahara and said negotiations would require “perseverance, patience and creativity.”
He called on “our Moroccan brothers to face up to history together with us by seizing on this historic window of opportunity that has opened for us.”
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas described the first round in June as “very difficult” and “the beginning of a long process.”
The June talks were arranged after the UN Security Council in April urged Morocco and the Polisario to launch direct, UN-sponsored talks.
Rabat annexed the northwest African territory on the Atlantic coast after former colonial ruler Spain and neighboring Mauritania withdrew in the 1970s, sparking a 16-year long war with the Polisario Front.
The two sides reached a cease-fire in 1991, but Rabat repeatedly pushed back a promised self-determination referendum and since 2002 has insisted such a vote is not necessary.
In April, Morocco proposed an autonomy referendum that envisages giving Western Sahara control over its affairs through legislative, executive and judicial institutions but under Moroccan sovereignty. Rabat also wants Algeria, the main backer of the Polisario, to be involved in any settlement.
