Sahraoui Foreign Minister: « We’re Ready To Open Direct Negotiations With Morocco »

The Sahraoui Foreign Minister Mr. Mohamed Ould Salek reiterated Monday in Algiers “the will of SADR to enter into direct negotiations with Morocco to end the occupation and allow the Saharawi people to enjoy their inalienable right to the freedom and independence through a fair, free and transparent referendum on self-determination, through which only the Saharawi people will be directly consulted”.

The Saharawi diplomat, in this regard, stressed that “the Saharawi party will in no way accept the participation of Moroccans in the referendum of self-determination”, indicating that the Identification Commission of MINURSO had identified who must vote on the basis lists of the Saharawi population established by Spain in 1974, in collaboration with the elders of the Saharawi tribes”.

In this context, he firmly denounced the attempts of the Moroccan occupier to “change the demographic composition of the Saharawi people” and to proceed, by the same token, to fraud practices in such a popular referendum.

 Mr. Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, also declared that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) has the right, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU), to request the military intervention of the UA in the event that Morocco refuses a peaceful solution to the Western Sahara conflict.

“The SADR as a member country of the AU, can and it has the right to request the AU military intervention in case Morocco refuses the peaceful solution to the Western Sahara conflict and in case it rejects the direct negotiations, a formula envisaged by the UN Special Envoy Horst Kohler, “said Mr. Ould Salek during a press conference he hosted at the headquarters of the SADR Embassy in Algiers.

In such a case, the minister explained, “the AU will consider that Morocco refuses the solution to the conflict pitting the two member countries by peaceful means.

Certainly SADR, the AU, the United Nations and other countries will draw the necessary conclusions”.

The head of Saharawi diplomacy also recalled that “Morocco signed with the Polisario Front in 1991 the conflict resolution plan by negotiating directly with the legitimate representative of the Saharawi people, under the auspices of the former Special Envoy of the UN in Western Sahara, James Baker, and all the Special Envoys, but “backtracking discredits Morocco”.

Referring to the latest indirect talks recently initiated by the UN Special Envoy to Western Sahara, Mr. Horst Kohler, in Berlin, to which both parties to the conflict were invited (the Polisario Front and Morocco) and the neighboring countries (Algeria and Mauritania), the Saharawi Foreign Minister said that these separate contacts are part of a new phase of Kohler’s mission which constitutes “a first step towards preparing precisely the second stage which consists in kick starting direct negotiations”.