“The pardon by his Majesty King Mohammed underlines that the situation in the territory and in Morocco in general was changing towards a better future of reconciliation, democracy and prosperity,” said Khali Henna Ould Errachid, chairman of the Royal Consultative Council for Sahara Affairs. According to Reuters, the 142-member council was named by Mohammed last month “as part of Rabat’s bid to win the hearts and minds of the Sahrawis ahead of an autonomy plan to be unveiled by Morocco later this year.”

The leadership of the independence movement has rejected this bid, demanding instead a referendum on independence. “The king of Morocco can never decide in place of the Saharawi people,” Mohamed Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front, the organization that has led the independence struggle for more than 30 years, said February 27. “The Saharawi people, for their part, categorically reject the idea of autonomy, simply because it intends to install a colonial solution…. The principle of self-determination of our people is sacred and unquestionable.”

Meanwhile, the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, announced his plan to propose that the UN Security Council end the 15-year process of UN-brokered negotiations between Morocco and the Polisario Front.

In the April 19 report, Annan said the United Nations is “taking a step back.” The Security Council should recognize “the political reality that nobody was going to force Morocco to give up its claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara,” Annan said. Therefore, the two parties should begin direct talks “to work out a compromise between international legality and political reality.”

The Polisario Front won independence from Spain in 1975. However, the Spanish government signed an accord with neighboring Morocco and Mauritania, dividing the territory. Morocco then sent hundreds of thousands of settlers along with military forces to seize most of the territory.

In the ensuing 15 years, the Polisario Front fought a war to regain control over the country. Tens of thousands of Saharawis fled Moroccan occupation and still live today in refugee camps in southern Algeria, where Polisario has its base. It controls about 20 percent of Western Sahara, while the Moroccan monarchy controls the rest.

In 1991, the Polisario Front and Rabat signed a truce and began the UN-brokered negotiations.

“The Saharawis regret the waste of 15 years of efforts,” Kamal Fadel, the Polisario representative to Australia, wrote in an April 26 opinion column, titled “Has the UN betrayed the Saharawis?” Fadel noted, “The writing on the wall is clear to the Saharawi people and their leadership that the UN is not able to resolve the conflict and basically that it is up to them to do whatever in their power to put pressure on Morocco to abide by international legality.”  
 
 
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