UN chief reiterates MINURSO’s role is ceasefire monitoring

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres reiterated that the mission of the MINURSO is to ensure the ceasefire is respected in the Sahara region between Morocco and the Algeria-based polisario front.

The statement deals a blow to the Polisario and their Algerian mentors who are still waiting for a referendum, a proposal that proved infeasibility and has been dropped in Security Council resolutions for years.

Answering a question last week at Sciences Po Paris, Guterres reiterated that the MINURSO has been facing challenges in its ceasefire monitoring mission since Morocco put an end to Polisario’s blockage and banditry in the Guerguarat border crossing.

The UN Security Council’s most recent resolution on the Sahara had urged the Polisairo to facilitate the work of the MINURSO in monitoring the ceasefire and allow for the resupply of their teamsites and observers.

Morocco’s representative to the UN Omar Hilale had said after the resolution that the MINURSO had warned that it may leave the area east of the berm if Polisario continued its obstacles to the MINURSO mission.

Polisario are using hunger and thirst blackmail against the MINURSO, if the latter leaves the area east of the Berm Morocco will retrieve that area which it handed to the UN mission after the ceasefire agreement, Hilale had said.

Guterres, who previously served as UNHCR chief, knows very well the Sahara issue and has helped organize family visits from the Algeria-based and Polisario-administered Tindouf camps to the southern provinces.

During his leadership of UNHCR, he refused to increase the amount of aid sent to the camps because he deemed that the number of people there is far below the inflated figures put forward by the Algerian government and its polisario proxies.

UNHCR kept asking for a census of the population in Tindouf camps since 2009 but the calls fell on deaf Algerian ears who are intent on keeping using the camps dwellers as political instruments.

The UN position has been to urge the parties to the conflict – including Algeria- to negotiate without pre-conditions and in good faith in order to find a mutually-acceptable lasting political solution on the basis of compromise while highlighting the credibility of Morocco’s autonomy initiative.