AA / Alger / Aksil Ouali
The Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, arrived on Sunday evening at the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf (southwestern Algeria) to meet with the Sahrawi authorities .
The second tour of the refugee camps since his appointment, the UN representative met, as soon as he arrived there according to the Algerian press agency APS (official), the Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.
The talks took place during a meeting behind closed doors, in the presence of the representative of the Polisario Front at the UN, Sidi Mohamed Omar. Nothing has filtered out concerning the content of the exchanges between Staffan de Mistura and the representatives of the Polisario.
This meeting is part, let us recall, within the framework of the deepening of the consultations with the various parties and the extension of the consultations to various activities of the Sahrawi society, with a view to preparing a report to be presented to the Security Council. next October.
He will work, through this meeting, the last stage of his visit to the Saharawi refugee camps, to seek new ways to find a solution to the conflict in Western Sahara. Before going to Tindouf, Staffan de Mistura met the Moroccan authorities last July in Rabat.
The UN envoy had already met, last Saturday, with the head of the delegation of Polisario negotiators Khatri Addouh and Sidi Mohamed Omar.
“The Polisario is committed to a just peace (and) is committed to defending, by all means, the right of the Sahrawi people to achieve their legitimate objectives for self-determination and independence”, declared Sidi Mohamed Omar to the APS agency following this interview.
According to him, the representatives of the Polisario Front are “ready to cooperate with the UN as well as with its emissary for this purpose”.
Appointed to this post in November 2021, Staffan de Mistura made his first tour of the region last January, which took him to Rabat, Mauritania, Algiers and Tindouf.
The question of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony considered a “non-autonomous territory” by the UN, has opposed Morocco to the Polisario Front since 1975. Controlling nearly 80% of Saharawi territory, Rabat proposes an autonomy plan under its sovereignty.
For its part, the Polisario demands a self-determination referendum under the aegis of the UN, planned since the signing in 1991 of a ceasefire between the two parties.
But since that date, several UN emissaries have tried to find a definitive solution to this conflict, in vain.
The question has not moved forward, giving rise to diplomatic crises between third countries, such as those between Algeria and Morocco and Spain, as well as the very recent one between Tunis and Rabat.
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