Morocco’s king offers no more than autonomy for disputed Western Sahara
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Tags: King Mohammed VI, Middle East, Morocco, Politics
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King Mohammed arrived to fanfare in Western Sahara’s Laayoune for his third visit since he succeeded to the throne in 1999 [AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar]
Morocco’s king has renewed Rabat’s insistence that there will be no compromise on the kingdom’s claim to sovereignty over the Western Sahara, vowing that he will offer no more than autonomy to end the four-decade deadlock over the region.
“This initiative is the maximum Morocco can offer,” Morocco’s King Mohamed said late on Friday, referring to the autonomy plan for the region.
“Its implementation depends on reaching a final political agreement under the backing of the United Nations.”
King Mohammed VI made the announcement in the territory’s main city Laayoune, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Green March day, when hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians marched across the border with the then Spanish colony to lay claim to the sparsely populated stretch of desert.
“Those who are waiting for any other concession on Morocco’s part are deceiving themselves. Indeed, Morocco has given all there was to give,” the king said.
‘Conflict must end’
However, the Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks independence. A UN-brokered ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario has held since 1991 but UN efforts remained deadlocked on the territory’s future.
UN special envoy to Western Sahara Christopher Ross has intensified visits to the region and Europe recently to facilitate negotiations without preconditions and in good faith, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement last week.
“This conflict must be brought to an end if the people of the region are to meet their shared challenges and achieve their full potential,” Ban said.
The king also vowed that revenues from the mineral-rich Western Sahara will continue to be invested locally.
He listed several projects that are due to be implemented to improve infrastructure in the territory, including a desalination plant and industrial zones.
He promised that “revenues from natural resources will continue to be invested in the region, for the benefit of the local populations and in consultation and coordination with them”.
The Polisario’S main base is in Tindouf across the border in Algeria, where tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees also live in desert camps.
The king lashed out at Algiers for not doing more for the refugees.
“The people in Tindouf… continue to suffer from poverty, despair, deprivation and the systematic violation of their basic rights,” he said.
On Wednesday, the UN’s Ban called for negotiations in the coming months to finally settle the Western Sahara dispute.
What will happen from this. Absolutely nothing but at least it’s in the open
Spain is still to this day doing the exact same thing to Seuta and Melilia, both are Moroccan cities in Moroccan land, nobody’s talking about it either.
It’s the pot calling the kettle black.
Maybe because it’s less known than the Israel/Palestine situation. There is hardly actual conflict apparently then in the wars in and around Israel, so less media focus here.
Also I guess Israel wants to be considered a western country (or wants to be treated as such) and is thus held to higher standards than north African country. There are more reasons that go in this direction as well.
Make this issue more public and I bet that most of the people that criticize Israel will also criticize it.
The criticism that comes from major organizations, i.e. the UN the EU, etc. is ostensibly based on some sort of international legal standard. If law is to mean anything, it must be applied consistently across all cases. This “Israel is a western country so it gets judged by a higher standard” argument is patronizing to Israel, demeaning to ‘non-Western’ countries, and makes a mockery of the very concept of international law.
I totally agree that the same law should apply to everyone and all and that morocco should be held to the same standards as Israel when it comes to criticizing etc. My comment wasn’t supposed to justify the discrepancies but rather explain why they happen, I certainly don’t endorse them.
The EU/UN etc are for the most part politicians and hence will focus their own attention more on where the public’s attention is. If the media picks this up and makes a deal out of it, those organisations will most likely also publicly criticize morocco.
My comment about Israel being considered a western country wasn’t a judicial statement that they should be treated differently, but rather that in the western public opinion they are held to a higher standard.
Random example: If Zambia started killing off all gays we would be outraged with mean comments being posted online, but there would be hardly any actual consequences. If France started doing the same, there would be a huge public outcry across the west with huge actual consequences.
That’s at least my opinion/thoughts on this issue :).
The Western Sahara also has a much, much smaller population density than most of the other places around the world involved with conflict. So it’s not as if this is the same as Russia annexing Crimea, which had four times the number of people than the entire Western Sahara.