Third round of UN-backed talks on Sahara set for next month

New York, A third round of United Nations-backed negotiations on the Sahara dispute opposing Morocco to the Algerian-backed separatist movement "Polisario" will take place early next month, it was announced here Friday. UN spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters that the next meeting of the parties is scheduled for 7-9 January in Manhasset, outskirts of New York City, which already hosted the two previous rounds of negotiations in June and August this year.The third round, as the two previous ones, will be facilitated by Peter van Walsum, the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara. Letters of invitation from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have been sent to both Morocco and the Polisario and to neighbouring countries, Algeria and Mauritania which attended the June and August negotiations as observers. The second round of talks in August wrapped up with agreement among the parties that the status quo is unacceptable and the process of negotiations will continue. Morocco, in a bid to solve the 32-year old dispute, proposed, in April,a substantial autonomy to its Southern Provinces, known as the Sahara. But the Polisario separatists, backed by Morocco’s eastern neighbor, Algeria, insists that the final status of the former Spanish colony, ceded to the North African country by Madrid under the 1975 Accords, should be decided in a referendum that includes independence as an option. Morocco’s autonomy offer was hailed as “serious and credible” by the member countries of the UN Security Council, as it paves for the way for a final solution to this conflict which has lasted for too long, according to the UN. The latter set up, in September 1991, a peace keeping mission in the territory called the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara(MINURSO) to monitor the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario. In October, the Security Council extended the mandate of MINURSO through next April and called on the two sides “to continue to show political will and work in an atmosphere propitious for dialogue in order to engage in substantive negotiations.”