Friday, October 10, 2008

AFTER 18 YEARS OF MINURSO STILL NO REFERENDUM

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Moroccan precondition of autonomy paralyses Manhasset’s negotiations (POLISARIO)

09/10/2008




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Negotiations on Western Sahara’s self-determination in Manhasset are paralysed because of the Moroccan precondition of autonomy, POLISARIO Front declared before the UN’s 4th Committee of decolonisation on Wednesday.

"The last negotiations of Manhasset did not progress, even with the implementation of some confidence-building measures proposed by the UN, because of Morocco’s pre-condition" of autonomy, POLISARIO Front’s representative to the UN, Mr. Ahmed Boukhari, indicated.

This is a "a violation of the resolution 1754" adopted last April 2007 by the UN Security Council, he affirmed. "If this unjustified pre-condition is not removed, it is simply impossible to have a substantial progress in the negotiations in the future", he underlined.

POLISARIO Front, he added "is determined to continue believing in the pre-eminence of the international legality as an essential parameter", underlining that the Saharawi party will continue cooperating with the UN Secretary General and his Personal envoy.

"We hope that our neighbour (Morocco) will seriously react and that one day i twill opt for serious negotiations", he said. Saharawis "are ready to give what can be given and take what must be taken. In one word: we are ready to negotiate on everything except on our people’s right to self-determination and independence", he affirmed.

"We are not a Moroccan province so as to need an administrative autonomy. We are a country listed on the agenda of the 4th Committee that longs for complete decolonisation through a just and regular referendum", Mr. Boukhari underlined.

"On the basis of the UN Charter and its resolutions, the Saharawi people are entitled to freely choose between independence and any other option, including integration with Morocco. This is the UN’s doctrine, the contrary is a doctrine of two weights two measures", he considered.

"We are a peaceful people, victims of an never preceded act of injustice in the history of the post-colonial Africa. The price is and will be expensive but we are determined to continue the legitimate struggle and our resistance until the full exercise of our inalienable right to self-determination", Mr. Boukhari said.

"The entrenchment of morocco behind its position of intransigence, paired with the persisting oppression against our people, will not help in building confidence and the necessary conditions for a solution based on self-determination", he warned.

Morocco "openly talks about a dangerous real politic stained with an innocent blood as a replacement to international legality", POLISARIO Front’s deplored.

He recalled that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had stressed in its report last September 2006 that human rights violations in the occupied territories are the result of the non-respect of the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination.

He also recalled that morocco accepted in 1991 the AUO-UN Settlement Plan that include independence as one of three options in a referendum on self-determination that was supposed to take place the following year and organized by the Un Mission for the Organisation of a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

"Morocco, he regretted, went back on its engagement as it did not honour its engagements in the Houston Accords of 1997, which stressed the modalities of the implementation of the referendum and which were endorsed by the Security Council.

18 years after its deployment, "MINURSO is encircled in its headquarters in El Aaiun by the Moroccan flags, humiliated and helpless in front of the human rights violations that are committed there. How can it be that this happens under the sight of the UN", he bitterly wondered.

The 4th Committee, which started its annual session on Monday, continued hearing petitioners on the questions of Western Sahara and other Non-Self-Governing territories on Wednesday.

The majority of the petitioners called on the UN to enable the Saharawi people to exercise their right to self-determination and put an end to the Moroccan illegal occupation of Western Sahara.





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