Madrid, 12/07/2005 (SPS) The Intifada currently lived in the occupied territories of Western Sahara highlights “the urgency of a fair and definitive solution” to a conflict prevailing since thirty years, failing which “the action-reaction dynamic would degenerate into bloodshed,” the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) president Mohamed Abdelaziz stressed Tuesday in Madrid.

Such bloodshed would make “extremely precarious peaceful perspectives” for the settlement of the conflict, Abdelaziz considered in a conference on the recent political and economic developments of the Saharawi issue, organised by the Forum Europe.

The Head of the State said that the Moroccan blockage to the different plans of peace elaborated and approved by the UN, such as the 1990 settlement plan and the 2003 Baker Plan, as well as the violent suppression exerted against Saharawi civil population in the occupied zones, is putting the Saharawi leadership in the face of a "dilemma".

The essence of this dilemma, he explained, is on the one hand the weakening of the peaceful perspective because of "the Absence of an accurate response from the international community to Moroccan prolonged intransigent attitude". On the other hand, Saharawi people’s "justified frustration due to their long awaiting of the reaching of a peaceful solution to the conflict, in which they believed, puts the ongoing cease-fire under serious pressures".

"We must admit that the persistence of the status quo, resulting from Moroccan obstruction to the multiple attempts aimed at finding a definitive and just solution to the conflict, can but result to an increasingly brutal suppression in the occupied zones, to a resume to hostilities or to both at the same time", he warned.

On another hand, the President of SADR underlined that as far as the experience of 30 years has proved, it seems that "some other European countries (...) adopts a specific policy regarding Western Sahara and the Maghreb (...) that attempts to establish, in the margin and sometimes in parallel with the international legality, a relation with the region on the basis of economic and commercial interests that the Saharawi conflict makes possible": fishing accords and weapons trade.

Such a vision, he put, is "prisoner of its own reasoning" since it counts on the "indefinite persistence of tension and conflict", it is "counterproductive" and benefits to none. "Morocco, and even though it is occupying Western Sahara and plundering its natural resources, is not more secure, more democratic or more prosperous now than in 1976", he said.

In this respect, President Abdelaziz denounced the implication of some foreign companies in the plundering of the Western Sahara’s natural resources. "The Saharawi cause, a just and legitimate cause, was scarified, in a way, (…) for the sake of ephemeral profit", he regretted.

Concerning the role of Spain in the settlement of the dispute, he underlined that this country can contribute and impulse the peace process. Some sides, nevertheless, he said, try for different reasons "to support, and propose, other ways of resolving the problem, certainly knowing that these ways omit the fundamental in the reference to international legality, that is to say the self-determination in a case the UN identify as a decolonisation case".

"We are not satisfied with the Spanish Government’s and Socialist Party’s position", Mr. Abdelaziz frankly affirmed. He noted that this position is not at the level of the serious nature of the situation in Western Sahara, which is characterised by the suppression of peaceful demonstrations in favour of self-determination, detention of Saharawi activists, such as Mrs. Aminetou Haidar and Mr. Hamad Hamad (the latter was arrested Monday from inside the old Spanish cultural centre in El Aaiun), the torture these activists were subjected to and the expulsion of many Spanish and Norwegian delegations, from Western Sahara.

To the Saharawi leader, the only "viable" solution to the conflict of Western Sahara is a referendum on self-determination. In this respect he recalled that all other options failed: The parting of the Sahara between Morocco and Mauritania, the Annexation of the territory via military forces, the Moroccan vain efforts to implicate multinational companies and to pretend that Saharawi population in the occupied territories are pro Moroccan. "the continuity of the conflict only increase the isolation of Morocco", he said. (SPS)

010/090/700 121757 Jul 05 SPS