A senior Polisario official has acknowledged what he called a real US effort to push talks on Sahara, in a shift from the movement’s long running habit of playing down such contacts and in comments that quickly jarred with a different line from its own representative in Spain.
Mohamed Yeslem Beissat, presented as Polisario’s foreign affairs official, told Algerian media there was a “real American effort” to bring the parties closer together and organize direct rounds aimed at reaching a solution in line with UN resolutions, a stronger language than Polisario has usually used for meetings it had tended to dismiss as little more than consultations.
Abdallah Arabi, Polisario’s representative in Spain, denied that formal negotiations with Morocco were under way, saying the contacts did not rise to that level, especially on Morocco’s autonomy proposal.
He repeated Polisario’s attachment to a referendum and cast the meetings in Washington and Madrid as preliminary contacts rather than real bargaining over an endgame.
In February, the US mission to the United Nations said senior US and UN delegations had facilitated discussions in Madrid with Morocco, Polisario, Algeria, and Mauritania on implementing Security Council Resolution 2797.
Resolution 2797 itself, adopted in October 2025, renewed MINURSO’s mandate and backed efforts to move the political process forward.
The resolution described Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan as a “serious, credible, and realistic” basis for reaching a political solution and treated it as a basis for negotiation, while making no mention of a referendum that includes independence
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