UN spokesman announced that the UN envoy for the Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, had arrived in Rabat to meet with Moroccan officials and would not visit Western Sahara.
A spokesman for the Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric said that de Mistura “ decided not to proceed with a visit to Western Sahara during this trip, but looks forward to doing so during his upcoming visits to the region. The Personal Envoy’s visits aim at constructively advancing the political process on Western Sahara,”
“The visits of the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations aim to advance the political process in the Sahara in a constructive manner,” Dujarric said.
De Mistura began on Saturday an official visit to Morocco, where he is meeting “all stakeholders in the region in the coming days,” and “intends to remain guided by the clear precedents set by his predecessors.”
“What de Mistura is looking for is how we can move the dialogue forward in the context of the relevant Security Council resolutions,” Dujarric said.
Nearly three years after former UN envoy Horst Kohler’s resignation, De Mistura was appointed to the position in November of last year. His first visit to Morocco and Western Sahara happened in January, making this his second tour on the conflict.
UNSC’s latest resolution, adopted last October called on Algeria several times to resume the round-table process. Algeria has remained steadfast in its refusal to join “talks” around the Western Sahara issue, claiming it “is not part of the conflict.”
The UN called upon Morocco, Polisario, Algeria, and Mauritania to cooperate more fully with each other, and with the UN agencies, including through building additional trust to strengthen their involvement in the political process and to achieve progress towards a mutually acceptable political solution to the long-standing dispute, a solution that will benefit politically and economically the Sahel region.
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