France support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Sahara, game changer at Security Council

Morocco now has the full support for its sovereignty over the Sahara territory by two permanent security council members: The US and France. This support would set the direction for UN efforts to peacefully settle the long-frozen Sahara conflict on the basis of autonomy.

The UN Security Council resolutions have been welcoming Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan as “serious and credible,” they also called all parties to negotiate in good faith to “achieve a realistic, practicable, enduring and mutually acceptable political solution to the question of Western Sahara based on compromise and the importance of aligning the strategic focus of MINURSO and orienting resources of the United Nations to this end.”

This very paragraph in Resolution 2730 buries the referendum option, which has long-proven its infeasibility.

While Morocco has made its utmost concession offering autonomy under its sovereignty to end the conflict. Algeria and its Polisario proxies have not budged from their anachronistic position.

The US, as the pen holder of the resolution, expressed its clear support for Morocco’s full sovereignty over the territory and for the autonomy plan.

The US decision was followed by Spanish support for Morocco’s autonomy initiative, amid an increase in support for the Kingdom’s position on the issue at the African continent and in the Arab World and beyond.

The French straightforward support for Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory and for the autonomy proposal as the “sole basis” to settle the conflict, is a milestone in Morocco’s quest to gain global support for its territorial integrity.

With France and the US now fully backing Morocco on the Sahara issue, autonomy is set to become the basis on which the parties to the conflict, chief among which Algeria, should negotiate.

Morocco’s foreign ministry had made it clear, following a visit by UN envoy De Mistura to Rabat, that no process shall take place outside the round-table framework defined by the UN, with Algeria’s full participation; no solution outside the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative, and no serious process at a time when the ceasefire is being daily violated by polisario militias.

Foreign minister Bourita had explained that autonomy, as a negotiated political solution, gives direction to the UN peace process.