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SPS The Spanish Senate ask for the renewal of the commitment in favour of the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination 26.04.05
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Madrid, 26/04/2006 (SPS) The Spanish Senate unanimously approved, Tuesday, a motion in which it calls on its Government to renew, within the international organisations, including in the United Nations, Spain’s commitment in the "defence of the Saharawi people right to self-determination".
The self-determination of the Saharawi people constitutes "the basis and the key in the settlement of the conflict of the Western Sahara", the motion presented to the initiative of the Basque Nationalist Party’s Senate’s group (PNV).
The text also calls on the Spanish Government to "reaffirm its engagement in the defence and the protection of human rights of the Saharawi populations" in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara.
During a preliminary debate to the approval of the motion, PNV’s Senator, Mrs. Elena Etxegoyen, recalled that the successive UN’s General Assembly’s and Security Council’s resolutions as well as the rule of the International Court of Justice on the conflict "are all based on the same legal principle".
This principle is "the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination and the exercise of this right through a referendum", she underlined.
Evoking the UN’s Secretary General’s report on the conflict of the Western Sahara, Mrs. Etxegoyen affirmed that it is "inadmissible that this organisation renounce its responsibilities" by proposing "direct negotiations" between the parties to the conflict, Morocco and Polisario Front.
"It will be completely unfair to the Saharawi people, who are scrupulously implementing the UN’s resolutions since 30 years", she observed. (SPS)
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SPS Meeting of the UN’s Security Council on the question of the Western Sahara
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New York, 26/04/2006 (SPS) The UN’s Security Council held an informal meeting, Tuesday in New York, on the question of the Western Sahara, to study the last report of the UN’s Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, on the conflict, indicated diplomatic sources.
The Security Council also held meetings with the countries providing with the personnel for the UN’s mission for the organisation of a referendum in the Western Sahara (MINURSO), which mandate expires this April the 30th.
The Security Council will have to hold another meeting on the Western Sahara, this Friday, in which it will adopt a new resolution on the question and prorogue the MINURSO’s mandate for another 6 months.
In the face of the stalemate, Mr. Anna proposed in his last report to the Security Council direct negotiations between the Polisario Front and Morocco without preconditions.
Adopting the recommendations of his new Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, Mr. Peter Van Walsum, Mr. Annan evoked a "Realpolitik" that hinders the implementation of its own resolutions.
The UN has in fact adopted many resolutions, since 1965, on the question of the Western Sahara, affirming the inalienable right of the Saharawi people’s to govern themselves through a self-determination referendum.
The two parties to the conflict, Morocco and Polisario Front, has already negotiated directly many times on a period of more than 10 years.
These negotiations resulted, in August 1988, to the acceptance by the two parties to the conflict to the UN’s Settlement Plan, which was approved by the UN’s Security Council in its resolutions 658 of June 1990 and 690 of April 1991.
Morocco and Polisario Front also signed the Houston Accords, in September 1997, under the aegis of Mr. James Baker, then Personal Envoy of the UN’s Secretary General. These Accords fixed the modalities of the organisations of a self-determination referendum in the Western Sahara.
Mr. Baker efforts in favour o a just settlement of the conflict were crowned, in July 2003, by the unanimous adoption by the Security Council of the "Peace Plan for the Self-determination of the People of the Western Sahara (Baker Plan)", which plan for the holding of a self-determination referendum in the territory after a transitory period of 5 years.
Polisario Front accepted the Baker Plan, while Morocco rejected it denying all its engagements, and is refusing since then to recognise the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination.
It is this refusal, y Morocco, to respect the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination and the support Morocco is granted by some Occidental countries, as Mr. Annan pointed out in his report that pushed the UN’s Secretary General and his Personal Envoy to openly talk about the "realpolitik".
To the Saharawi President, inviting the two parties to the conflict to the table of negotiations "will lead us back to the point of departure (...) and step 40 years back".
Mr. Abdelaziz called on the international organisation "to assume its full responsibilities" and not to "deny its own Charter and international laws".
"We do not advice the Security Council to approve the so-called report, we are in fact the weakest part of the chain, a small colonised population, but if the peaceful means can not bring us our rights we will be forced to legally defend them via armed struggle", the Head of the Saharawi State warned.
In front of this deviation, "Algeria regrets that the United Nations, which vocation and raison d'être are to defend the law and justice, is now putting the real politic in the opposition to the international legality and is opting for the first over the second", wrote Algerian Permanent Ambassador to the UN, Youssef Yusfi.
He affirmed the conviction of his country that "it is only with the implementation of the plan for the self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara, approved by the Security Council as an optimum political solution to this conflict, as it is a compromise between the position of the two parties, and is to enable a just an definitive settlement of the question in strict conformity to the UN’s Charter and international legality".
During his meeting with Annan at the headquarters of the UN in New York, the Minister of State, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Mohammed Bedjaoui, "particularly insisted on the big distortion that risks to occur if the UN’s Security Council and Secretary General ignored this international legality, because that would probably generate serious consequences on the stability of the region".
The UN’s Secretary General "agreed on this analysis and asserted that he wil recommend that the project of resolution that will be adopted by the Security Council stress the necessity of negotiations between the two parties to the conflict, Polisario Front and Morocco, and the necessity of the implementation of the principle of self-determination", indicated an Algerian diplomatic source. (SPS)
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SPS The solution to the Western Sahara’s conflict passes through the respect of the right to self-determination (Saharawi students)
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Marrakech (Morocco), 26/04/2006 (SPS) Saharawi students in Marrakech reaffirmed on Tuesday that the "political solution to the Western Sahara’s conflict passes through the respect of the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination", during a sit-in the students organised in solidarity with the recently released Saharawi political prisoners. They further called to "the immediate and unconditional release of those still in Moroccan custody".
They also denounced "the brutal aggression committed by the Moroccan colonial forces against the Saharawi students in the university campus of Agadir while they were organising a reception to some Saharawi political prisoners released last Saturday", according to a press release publicised on Tuesday by the students.
The students affirmed that the political solution of the conflict of the Western Sahara must be based on the "right to self-determination as granted by the UN’s and the African Union’s resolutions".
The students finally launched an appeal to all international organisations to put pressures on Morocco so as to compel it end the Moroccan military and medias siege imposed on the territory since its invasion bt Morocco in 1975.
On another hand, 15 Saharawi families organised, on Tuesday in El Aaiun, a sit-in asking for "information on the fate of their sons, about whom they have no news to the date", announced concordant sources.
The Moroccan forces of occupation brutally intervened to disperse the demonstrators wounding 4 persons at least, mainly Likhlifi Nhabouha, Likhlifi Mohamed, Likhlifi Moustapha and Mme Ayach and ransacking the houses o these families.
IN the occupied city of Dakhla, flags of the Saharawi Republic were raised in the main streets of the city despite the state of siege imposed on this coastal city of the Western Sahara, according to the same sources. (SPS)
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SPS The conflict of the Western Sahara: "a problem of decolonisation under the responsibility of the UN", CORELSO underlines
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Paris, 26/04/2006 (SPS) The Committee for the respect of freedoms and human rights in the Western Sahara (CORELSO) underlined in Paris, on Tuesday, that the UN’s Secretary General’s report on Western Sahara «erases all the plans and accords concluded under the aegis of the United Nations since 1991» while the question is «a problem of decolonisation pertaining to the responsibility» of the international organisation.
"In his report to the Security Council, the UN’s Secretary General does not contribute to clarify the situation" on the Saharawi question, CORELSO declares in a press release.
"How is it possible to accept that the official of the International organisation, in charge for imposing the respect of the international law, suggests a compromise between the international legality and the Real Politick?", the CORELSO wonders.
The press release underlines however that the SG’s report recognises that "no country recognises the Moroccan claims of sovereignty over the territory, but refuses to mention the Baker Plan II and to the UN’s Settlement plan and proposes to resume to direct negotiations between the Polisario Front and Morocco".
"By so doing, Mr. Annan erases all the plans an accords concluded under the aegis of the UN since 1991", the Committee deplored, recalling that "it is a matter of decolonisation under the responsibility of the United Nations, which must, as it did in East Timor, bypass the obstruction of the occupying power and implement the peace plan until the holing of a free, just and transparent self-determination referendum".
On another hand, the Committee "hailed the recent released of 38 Saharawi political prisoner, who were arrested, condemned and imprisoned for having advocated their people’s right to self-determination".
"These release is no gift from the king of Morocco, it is the result of their courage and determination in front of oppression. It is also the result of the peaceful uprising of the Saharawis in addition to the international solidarity", CORELSO stresses.
Moreover, it "regrets the fact that all the political prisoners were not released. 13 Saharawi political prisoners are still maintained under detention in Moroccan prisons, in addition to hundreds reported missing of whom the Moroccan Government refuses to give information".
In this respect, CORELSO accuses the Moroccan Government of the use of this release of political prisoners "to veil its attempt to pass its plan of autonomy of the Western Sahara, in flagrant violation of the international legality and to its own engagements". (SPS)
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SPS A delegation of the Saharawi Republic participates to a meeting of donors for the Mauritanian elections process
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Nouakchott, 26/04/2006 (SPS) A delegation of the Saharawi Republic participated, Tuesday, to a meeting of the international donors for the financing of the electoral process in Mauritania, the African Union is organising in Nouakchott, indicated official sources.
Chaired by the Saharawi Ambassador in Libya, Melainine Etghana, the Saharawi delegation attended the works of this one day meeting with the participation of representatives from 24 African, Arab, and occidental countries in addition to international organisations, who ere discussing ways of finding funds for the financing of the whole electoral process in Mauritania, as decided by the Mauritanian transitional Government.
The representative of the African Union, Vijay Makhan, declared that the meeting was "a complete success" to his organisation, in which it sees "an active material and moral support to the process engaged in the African countries, under the aegis of he AU and of the transitional Government".
18 millions US dollars were so far collected from donors from a total of 22 US millions dollars, it was emphasised. (SPS)
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