LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Western Sahara Conflict: United Nations
built 643 days ago
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- UN Mediator for the Western Sahara conflict, Peter van Walsum, announced Wednesday that a further round of talks will be held on the Western Sahara at the Greentree Estates in Manhasset, New York March 11-13. The negotiations will go on despite threats by the Polisario Front prior to the just concluded third round of negotiations that this was the international community's "last chance" to conclude a settlement or face the prospects of a new war in the Maghreb. The Polisario's threats to resume hostilities came at a time of increasing international concerns about the escalating terrorist attacks in North Africa. In the last several months, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has launched a series of attacks against the Algerian Government and United Nations offices in Algeria as well as a recent attack on a tourist family in Mauritania. The Mauritanian attack led directly to the cancellation on this year's well-known international Paris-Dakar Rally. In a recent analysis, Yossef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), noted that the greatest threat to stability in the Maghreb and Western Mediterranean was what he described as "the rejuvenation of the terrorism campaign" of the Polisario Front.
Source:
The Western Sahara conflict entered its thirtieth year last November. Celebrated by Moroccans and lamented by Sahrawi nationalists, the anniversary went largely unnoticed by the international community. Though it has been on the Security Council's agenda since 1988, Western Sahara has defied resolution by three successive Secretaries General and Kofi Annan's former personal envoy, former US Secretary of State James Baker. It is likely that a fourth Secretary General will take over management of the conflict next year.
Source:
[W]ithin Western Sahara, nationalism has exploded rather than receded in recent years. Growing in militancy, the Western Saharan independence movement has spawned its own intifada, a decentralized, youth-led, anti-Moroccan protest movement in the occupied region. The Sahrawi heroes of this struggle are former political prisoners who have become unashamed nationalists. Many Sahrawis living under Moroccan administration are no longer afraid to speak their mind about the Moroccan occupation, for which they suffer regular beatings and imprisonment. The flag of Polisario, once unseen in Moroccan-controlled areas, is now a ubiquitous symbol of Sahrawi resistance. The only internal feedback that Polisario's leaders are receiving is toward greater confrontation not compromise.
Source:
October 11, 2006 – (AP) The head of Western Sahara's government-in-exile urged the next U.N. secretary general Wednesday not to forget his people's three-decade struggle for independence from Morocco. "The credibility of the United Nations depends on respecting the fundamental principles of world peace, including peoples' right to self-determination," Mohamed Abdelaziz said in an interview broadcast on Algerian radio.
Source:
There is only one hope for a peaceful and just resolution to the Western Sahara conflict. Key states, like the United States government, must back up their rhetorical support of self-determination with meaningful action. International pressure must build on Morocco to allow and respect an internationally organized expression of self-determination for the native population of Western Sahara. As Morocco is highly sensitive to its international image, the only weapon required is the tool of shame. At the same time, though, Morocco's domestic stability and reform should be supported in word and deed.
Source:
JANE BAHAIJOUB, Chairman, Family Protection, said she was encouraged by the United Nations-sponsored talks between the conflicting parties, since she had always said that a political solution was needed in Western Sahara. While a political settlement was being negotiated, the plight of the civilian population in the Tindouf camps -- who lived in inhumane conditions -- must be addressed. Algerian authorities had systematically refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UNHCRto conduct a census in the camps, to establish the exact number of people there and their origin. She asked why.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
United Nations