After accusing Morocco of being behind its departure from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) in 2017, the American diplomat Christopher Ross returns to charge. He has always supported the Polisario, protected by Algeria, against the kingdom.
The Security Council “must convince Morocco to negotiate without preconditions and to commit to the Polisario proposal on a basis of reciprocity”, considers the former personal envoy of the Secretary General for the Sahara (2009-2017) in a long message on his Facebook page. According to him, the kingdom “is ignoring the Council’s call to avoid preconditions in the negotiations, its call to examine the Polisario proposal and its call to allow MINURSO free access to all interlocutors in its area of operations”. Clearly, it aligns itself once again behind the Polisario which is demanding the independence of the Sahara via a self-determination referendum.
Christopher Ross also proposes a solution that can, according to him, definitively settle the question of the Sahara. “The only way that (Staffan) De Mistura (current UN envoy) 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”.
