Little hope for resolution of Western Sahara situation this year: UN Envoy

The United Nations top envoy for Western Sahara today implied he did not foresee any breakthroughs during the current year in the political impasse between the Moroccan Government and the Frente POLISARIO independence movement over the territory’s status.

“Something that has not been solved over more than thirty years, you can not really expect to be solved in a year,” Peter van Walsum, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Personal Envoy said in response to a reporter who asked him if the situation was too complex to be resolved in 2006, after briefing the UN Security Council on his trip to the region late last year.

Mr. van Walsum said he could not divulge the content of his briefing, as the Council had met in closed consultations.

The 14-year old UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which has been monitoring a ceasefire between the two sides, was established to organize a self-determination referendum in the former Spanish colony which Morocco has claimed as its own, and where the POLISARIO has been fighting for independence.

On 17 October 2006, after meeting with country leaders in Morocco, Algiers, and Mauritania, Mr. Walsum said that the parties in the region are “quasi-irreconcilable.”