The new UN envoy to the Western Sahara was to embark on his first trip to the region Wednesday to sound out prospects for resuming stalled talks between Morocco and the Polisario independence movement.
Christopher Ross's week-long tour was to begin in Rabat to meet Moroccan leaders and would include stops in Tindouf, in the southwestern Algerian desert, for talks with Polisario chief Mohamed Abdelaziz, and then in Algiers, according to UN spokeswoman Michele Montas.
Montas said in a statement that Ross, a former US ambassador to Syria and Algeria, would leave Algiers February 25 for Madrid and then Paris, capitals of two countries belonging to the Group of Friends of Western Sahara.
The Group of Friends also includes Russia, Britain and the United States.
For more than three decades, Tindouf has been home to Sahrawi refugees from the Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich territory which was annexed by Morocco in the 1970s following the withdrawal of colonial power Spain.
That sparked a war with the Polisario. The two sides agreed a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991, but a promised self-determination referendum never materialized.
UN officials cautioned though against expecting too much from Ross's tour, which they said was aimed at sounding out the parties about the prospects for resuming the stalled UN-mediated talks in the New York suburb of Manhasset.
Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario have held four fruitless rounds in Manhasset since June 2007.
Ahmed Bujari, the Polisario's UN representative, said last week that his group reiterated to Ross, who took up his post last month, that "we are dealing with an issue of self-determination in the framework of UN Security Council resolutions."
"It's up to the people of Western Sahara to choose their future," he added.
In Rabat, Moroccan government spokesman Khalid Naciri meanwhile said Tuesday: "Ross will find in Morocco the same openness of mind and the same good faith requested by the (UN) Security Council to move the negotiation process forward."
That process, he added, "must pick up from where his predecessor (Peter Van Walsum) left off."
The UN Security Council has called for talks "without preconditions and in good faith" between the parties to achieve "a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution."
Meanwhile France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, whose country is a close ally of Rabat, said it was significant that Ross planned to stop in Paris.
"We will listen to him. We believe that the Manhasset process must continue," he noted. "We believe that the Moroccan proposals are interesting and we call for a direct dialogue between the parties."
Van Walsum, whose UN mandate was not renewed after it expired on August 21, was accused of favoring Morocco after stating that independence for Western Sahara was "an unrealistic option."
Rabat has offered a form of autonomy for the territory under Moroccan sovereignty, while the Polisario wants a referendum on self-determination that would include the option of full independence.
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