The General Assembly expresses "satisfaction that the parties have met on 18 and 19 June and on 10 and 11 August 2007 under the auspices of the Personal Envoy of the Secretary General and in the presence of the neighbouring countries and that they have agreed to continue the negotiations," reads the draft resolution, whose final adoption will take place at a forthcoming plenary session of the 62nd session of the UNGA.
Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario front held two rounds of talks on the Sahara in Manhasset in June and August 2007 in a bid to solve the three-decade long dispute over Morocco’s southern provinces, the Sahara.
The draft resolution "supports strongly Security Council resolution 1754 (2007), by which the Council called upon the parties to enter into negotiations without preconditions in good faith, taking into account the developments of the last months, with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution .
The document also commends “the efforts undertaken by the Security General and his Personal Envoy for the implementation of Security Council resolution 1754 (2007) and encourages the parties to continue to show political will and a spirit of cooperation in supporting those efforts and to create a propitious atmosphere for dialogue and the success of the negotiations.” It calls upon “the parties and the State of the region to cooperate fully with the Secretary-General and his Personal Envoy and with each other.”
The draft resolution also calls upon the UN Secretary General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-third session a report on the implementation of present resolution.
In the meantime this draft resolution raised up reactions, particularly from the Moroccan permanent representative in the UN Mr El Mustapha Sahel who underlined that the adoption by consensus a draft resolution on the Sahara issue constitutes “a strong signal of support” to the new process of negotiations, which is taken place thinks to the Moroccan proposal called “ Moroccan initiative for negotiating an autonomy statute for the Sahara region” the Moroccan diplomat” he added saying “ from now on the general assembly do not refer to the previous initiatives , which were the source of the deadlock”
It is notable that the draft resolution adopted by the 4th commission of the Un general assembly means that the latter decided to join the security council, by giving its full support to the new political process based on direct negotiations between parties concerned on the basis of the Moroccan initiative for negotiating an autonomy statute for the Sahara region.
Most of interventions and speeches delivered before the 4th commission concerning the future of Western Sahara were in no doubt objective and supporting Moroccan endless efforts to reach a just and durable solution to the conflict over the Western Sahara issue.
Source: http://www.corcas.com
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