The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution Tuesday welcoming “new momentum” from the restart of talks on resolving the decades-old dispute over the mineral-rich Western Sahara, but Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front remain deeply at odds over its future. South Africa and Russia abstained in the 13-0 vote, calling the U.S.-drafted resolution unbalanced. Last year, the council called for accelerated efforts to reach a solution to the more than four-decade dispute over the territory. But two rounds of talks in December and March, brokered by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ personal envoy, Horst Kohler, made no headway. Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975 and fought the Polisario Front until the United Nations brokered a cease-fire in 1991 and set up a peacekeeping mission to monitor it and facilitate a referendum on Western Sahara’s future, which has never taken place. Morocco has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara. But the Polisario Front insists the local population, which it estimates at 350,000 to 500,000, has the right to a referendum. The resolution adopted Tuesday extended the mandate of the U.N. mission known as MINURSO, which has a 235-strong military contingent, for six months until Oct. 31. While welcoming “the new momentum”… Read full this story
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