The United Nations Personal Envoy for the Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, arrived on Wednesday in the Moroccan capital Rabat, first leg of his regional tour that will also lead him to Algeria, and Mauritania.
The UN Envoy held a meeting Thursday with Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita.
During the meeting that took place in the presence of Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Omar Hilale, the Moroccan delegation reiterated the fundamentals of the Kingdom’s position, as recalled in the speeches of King Mohammed VI on the 45th and 46th anniversaries of the Green March.
Actually, the Sovereign had reaffirmed, in these speeches, Morocco’s commitment to the resumption of the political process conducted under the exclusive auspices of the UN to achieve a political solution on the basis of the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative, within the framework of the process of the round tables, in the presence of the four participants.
The regional visit of de Mistura is part of the implementation of Security Council resolution 2602, adopted on October 29, 2021, in which the UN Executive body reiterates its call to the parties to continue their commitment to the roundtable process, in a spirit of realism and compromise, to achieve a realistic, pragmatic, sustainable political solution based on compromise.
This regional tour marks the first effort, under the auspices of the UN through its special envoy, to resume dialogue with all of the parties involved in the conflict,
The UN-backed efforts to resolve the Sahara issue have been halted since the resignation of the previous special envoy Horst Köhler back in 2019.
The UN’s political process has been largely recognized as “the only logical and feasible solution” to the conflict, which aims to resolve the decades’ long struggle for Moroccan territorial integrity through round tables and talks, involving all four parties to the conflict.