"Mr. Ross will work with the parties and neighboring countries based on the most recent Security Council Resolution 1813 and previous resolutions, building on progress made to date, in pursuit of a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution," Montas told reporters at the UN headquarters.

    Ross is replacing Dutch Peter Van Walsum, whose mandate expired last August. UNSG Ban Ki-moon is "grateful to Mr. van Walsum for his dedicated service on the important issue of Western Sahara," Montas said.

    Ross, 66, has had a long career with the US State Department in which he worked on Middle Eastern and North African affairs. He mainly served as an ambassador to Syria and to Algeria, and was most recently Senior Adviser for the MENA at the US Mission to the UN.

    After retiring in 1999, Ross returned to active service to help coordinate U.S. public diplomacy toward the Arab and Muslim worlds (2001-2003), then to serve as Senior Advisor to the US Embassy in Baghdad (2004) and Special Advisor in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, working on Iraq.

    From 2006-2007, he was Senior Advisor to the U.S. Delegations to the U.N. General Assembly. He had also served as director of the American language center in Fez, Morocco.

    Earlier postings in the U.S. Foreign Service include: Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Director of Regional Affairs of the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs; Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires in Algiers; Press Attaché in Beirut, Lebanon; and Director of the American Cultural Center in Fez, Morocco.

    The new personal envoy for the Sahara has a Bachelor degree in Oriental (Near Eastern) studies from Princeton University, and a Master of Arts in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies from Johns Hopkins University. He speaks English, Arabic and French, and has taught Arabic at Columbia and Princeton Universities.

    Delegations from Morocco, the Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania took part, since June 2007, in four rounds of talks on the Sahara that were brokered by the former UN facilitator, Peter van Walsum.

   At the end of the last round, the parties agreed to pursue negotiations at a date to be set by common agreement.

    The talks process was launched thanks to an autonomy plan for the Sahara that Morocco proposed, and which was welcomed by the UNSC and the international community as serious and credible to settle the Sahara issue.

Source: MAP
News and events on Western Sahara issue / Corcas