April 26, 2002
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to decide on the future of UN involvement in the peace process in Western Sahara, pending the expiry this month of the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).
Annan, in a new report to the council, also appealed for international support through UNHCR and WFP for relief for Sahrawi refugees. He said food supplies in refugee camps were low, the UN reported on Tuesday.
"I expect Morocco and Polisario (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro) to cooperate without further delay with UNHCR in the implementation of long overdue confidence-building measures, as repeatedly called for by the Security Council since 1999," Annan said. "The plight of the separated refugee families demands no less."
He expressed concern over the continued detention of 1,300 prisoners of war. "It is my earnest hope that the Council will join me once again in urging Polisario to release all remaining prisoners of war without further delay," Annan said. "I also hope that both parties will continue to cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to solve the problem of all those unaccounted for since the beginning of the conflict."
Annan has suggested four options on Western Sahara: One is for the UN to try to implement a 1988 settlement plan, even without the concurrence the Polisario and Morocco; another is for his personal envoy, James Baker III, to try to revise a draft framework agreement that he prepared a few months ago; for Baker to discuss the division of the territory with interested parties; or the termination of MINURSO's mandate.
Polisario wants independence for the 260,000-sq km territory that Morocco annexed in 1975 when the former colonial power, Spain, pulled out. The OAU recognised Western Sahara's independence, prompting Morocco to pull out of the continental body. In 1991, the two sides signed a cease-fire, paving the way for the deployment of MINURSO but efforts to organise a referendum on the territory's future have since failed.
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