The former Personal Envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Christopher Ross, recalls the “bad” memory of Moroccans. In a long message on Facebook, he once again showed his flagrant taking sides in the Sahara file, which had, incidentally, cost him his place at the time. However, he launched a peak that will not pass in Algiers and the separatist militia of the Polisario.
While his efforts to give power and stature to the Polisario separatist movement, created and guided by Algeria, were in vain during his mandate, Christopher Ross continues to hope and does not hesitate to add his grain of salt in the folder that was taken away from him.
As a reminder, the American diplomat considers that Morocco declared its sovereignty “unilaterally” over the Sahara, forgetting to see the proven historical facts which clearly demonstrate the Sahara’s belonging to Morocco.
Christopher Ross has never hidden his position in favor of Algeria and the separatists, and in this sense attacks Morocco at every opportunity that arises, which had considerably harmed his function as “mediator” which was supposed to to be “impartial” and above all “diplomatic”.
Thus, it is therefore no surprise that all his proposals made to get out of the impasse in which Staffan de Mistura, the current UN envoy is plunged, are directed towards Morocco. His proposals, analyzed more closely, look like a plan, a strategy aimed at opening the way for the Polisario to exercise sovereignty over the Sahara.
Without beating around the bush, the former personal envoy of the Secretary General for the Sahara (2009-2017) believes that the Security Council “must convince Morocco to negotiate without preconditions and to commit to the Polisario proposal on a basis of reciprocity.
He affirms that Morocco, without naming the Polisario or Algeria, which are the real protagonists blocking the process, “ignores the Council’s call to avoid preconditions in the negotiations, its call to examine the Polisario’s proposal and its call to allow MINURSO free access to all interlocutors in its area of operations”.
In other words, it calls for the negotiation of a project for the independence of the territory which would be led de facto by the polisario militia, on the basis of a referendum voted by a population instrumentalized, living in fear, ethnically modified and replaced for 50 years.
To this, Christopher Ross, adds that “the only way that De Mistura can hope to break the impasse is for the Council to give him a broader mandate, similar to that of James Baker (1997 to 2004). If his mandate is to be limited to shuttling from place to place and organizing meetings of the parties, as was the case for his three predecessors, he will face the same difficulties as them”.
In addition, he denies the entire mandate of the UN observation mission, Minurso, as if it did not have the possibility of moving freely in the territory, when it is the reference mission in the matter. which reports annually to the Security Council.
And as if to balance his persistent attack against the Kingdom, the former emissary tried to send two short messages to the address of the Polisario and Algeria, believing that if the opinions of Sahrawis living in Morocco are not taken into account, in a hypothetical referendum, this would be “destabilizing in nature”.
With this sentence, the American jumps back almost 50 years, when the debate was to determine the electorate, and when Algeria and the Polisario refused the vote to all Sahrawis that they did not have. failed to take them by force to the Tindouf camps, believing that only those, at the time, would have the right to express themselves.
Second and third peaks sent to the Algerian governing bodies, Ross indicates that it would be necessary “to convince the polisario to resume its old habit of receiving the head of MINURSO in Rabouni, in Algeria, rather than in Western Sahara to the east of the berm and to “pressure the Polisario and Algeria to verify the accuracy of the calculations of the High Commissioner for Refugees in 2017 on the population of refugees by appropriate means”.
Indeed, Algeria prevents any census of the population of the Tindouf camps, maintaining a blur on their number. In December 2017, the UNHCR estimated the number of Sahrawis living in camps in Algeria at 173,600.
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