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UN Security Council renews mandate of mission in Western Sahara
The UN Security Council on Thursday extended the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, for another year.
In a unanimously adopted resolution, the 15-member Council «decides to extend the mandate of MINURSO until 30 April 2014. But without extending its mission to monitor human rights in the Sahara.
The initial U.S. draft resolution further infuriated France, which was not informed. A French diplomatic source had called that draft initiative an “error and provocative.”
The most effective action was initiated by the Moroccan monarch himself, by persuading international actors, including the United States to freeze the idea expanding the MINURSO mandate to include human rights monitoring.
For Rabat, Human rights were not the issue, since the country has launched since 2003 several mechanisms to improve Human Rights in the whole territory, but Morocco was opposing the US draft due to suspicions this initiative may “deform” the mandate of the two-decade-old peacekeeping force.
In the resolution, the UN Security Council called upon all parties to “cooperate fully with the operations of MINURSO, including its free interaction with all interlocutors, and to take the necessary steps to ensure the security of as well as unhindered movement and immediate access for the United Nations and associated personnel in carrying out their mandate, in conformity with existing agreements.”
The Council also “calls upon all parties to continue to show political will and work in an atmosphere propitious for dialogue in order to enter into a more intensive and substantive phase of negotiations,” said the resolution.
Furthermore, the Council invited UN member states to lend appropriate assistance to such talks and requested the UN Secretary-General to brief it on a regular basis, and “at least twice a year, on the status and progress of these negotiations under his auspices.”
The most powerful body of the UN urged states to provide voluntary contributions to fund confidence-building measures that allow for visits between separated family members, as well as for other confidence-building measures agreed upon between parties, said the resolution.
MINURSO was founded in 1991 to monitor a ceasefire in Western Sahara between Morocco and the Frente Polisario, both of which claimed the area after the Spanish colonial administration of the land ended in 1976. The UN has been attempting to help find a peaceful settlement between the parties.
