UNITED NATIONS, 12 August 2007 — Morocco and the Polisario independence movement will meet outside New York for a second day of UN-brokered talks on their 32-year-long dispute over Western Sahara.
The two sides began negotiations Friday in Manhasseet, just east of New York City, 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 is, like the first, being hosted by UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s envoy for Western Sahara, Peter Van Walsum.
“I hope you will maintain the same good atmosphere that characterized the first round. However atmosphere is not everything,” Van Walsum said in opening remarks to the two sides as the talks got under way Friday, according to a spokesman.
“The Security Council expects us to conduct good faith and productive negotiations,” he added.
The talks yesterday were expected to focus on confidence-building measures, according to a Polisario official in Algiers.
Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa, who led Rabat’s delegation, said after the June round 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 for 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.”
Earlier this month, Moroccan King Mohammed VI warned against “balkanization” on the African continent due to separatist movements.
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.
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.
