UN urges talks on Western Sahara after cease-fire breakdown

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council extended the U.N. peacekeeping ngo successful the disputed Western Sahara for a twelvemonth connected Friday, expressing interest astatine the breakdown of the 1991 cease-fire betwixt Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front and calling for a revival of U.N.-led negotiations.

The ballot was 13-0 with Russia and Tunisia abstaining.

The U.S.-drafted solution makes nary notation of U.S. backing for Morocco’s assertion to the mineral-rich territory successful the waning days of the Trump medication arsenic portion of efforts to get Morocco to admit Israel. And it did not notation the “low-intensity hostilities” -- arsenic a caller United Nations study describes the convulsive exchanges betwixt the 2 sides -- that person raged for the past year.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara, a erstwhile Spanish colony believed to person sizeable offshore lipid deposits and mineral resources, successful 1975, sparking a struggle with the Polisario Front. The U.N. brokered the 1991 cease-fire and established a peacekeeping ngo to show the truce and assistance hole a referendum connected the territory’s aboriginal that has ne'er taken spot due to the fact that of disagreements connected who is eligible to vote.

Morocco has projected wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara. But the Polisario Front insists the section population, which it estimates astatine 350,000 to 500,000, has the close to a referendum.

The Security Council stressed “the value of improving the quality rights concern successful Western Sahara and the Tindouf camps” successful Algeria, wherever Western Sahara refugees person lived for decades.

The solution calls connected the parties to resume U.N.-led negotiations without preconditions, “taking into relationship the efforts made since 2006 and consequent developments with a presumption to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable governmental solution, which volition supply for the self-determination of the radical of Western Sahara.” It says this should beryllium done “in the discourse of arrangements accordant with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, and noting the relation and the responsibilities of the parties successful this respect.”

Two roundtable meetings of Morocco and the Polisario Front, on with the neighboring countries of Algeria and Mauritania, successful December 2018 and March 2019 failed to marque immoderate headway connected the cardinal contented of however to supply for self-determination.

The solution welcomes the assignment of Staffan de Mistura arsenic Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ caller idiosyncratic envoy for Western Sahara.