WESTERN SAHARA: U.N. Chief Delays Referendum Until October

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 16 (IPS) - The long-delayed vote to decide the sovereign status of the Western Sahara has been pushed back again to Oct. 1995, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali reported Friday.

Citing delays in processing the large numbers of people claiming to be legitimate Saharawi voters, Boutros-Ghali also asked the U.N. Security Council to expand MINURSO, the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Sahara.

The U.N. chief seeks an increase in the number of voter identification centres, requiring the dispatch of some 50 professional staff to process voter applications and 105 U.N. police, in addition to 55 officers currently on the ground.

The 334-officer MINURSO mission thus may need to be expanded to some 450 troops to speed up the registration process, which has lagged since it kicked off last summer.

The delays -- caused by the mutual distrust between Morocco, which has sought to annex the Western Sahara since 1976, and the pro-independence Polisario Front -- have bedeviled the referendum ever since both sides agreed to hold it in 1991.

Particularly difficult has been the process to determine who is a legitimate Saharawi voter, a difficult task since the last census in the area was made by Spain in 1974.

Polisario, a liberation movement that previously struggled to liberate the Western Sahara from its former Spanish colonial occupier, contends that Morocco is seeking to pass off Moroccan citizens as Saharawi and thus tilt the vote.

Now, Boutros-Ghali estimates, the United Nations can begin a 'transitional period,' in which both sides exchange prisoners of war and offer amnesties to all political prisoners, next Jun. 1.

Under the transitional period's proposed timetable, Morocco is to reduce its military presence throughout the Western Sahara by mid-August, when the final list of registered voters can be published. The referendum should be held no later than 20 weeks after the transition begins, probably by October.

But the delays in the Sahara referendum have hurt the Security Council's support for MINURSO. The United States -- an ally of Moroccan King Hassan and a critic of the pace and cost of some U.N. missions -- has privately threatened to vote against MINURSO's extension if there are no signs of success soon.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service