UNITED NATIONS — Morocco’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Omar Hilale, used a rare General Assembly session this Tuesday to deliver one of his sharpest addresses yet on the Moroccan Sahara, framing the dispute in blunt, almost rhetorical terms. « The Sahara was Moroccan before October 30, it is more Moroccan after October 30, and it will remain Moroccan forever, » he told the assembled delegates.
The special session followed a veto cast on October 30 against a Security Council draft resolution that would have cleared the way for a final settlement of the decades-old dispute on the basis of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Hilale noted that Morocco does not contest the veto itself, but pointed to what it exposed: eleven member states had backed the text, a tally he described as proof that the current deadlock can no longer be sustained.
Hilale structured the bulk of his remarks around six direct questions to Algeria, each paired with his own answer. Why, he asked, does Algeria fear autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty when Rabat has already tabled a detailed proposal discussed in the Washington and Madrid negotiating rounds? Why does Algiers refuse to acknowledge its status as a principal party to the conflict, even as the Polisario Front survives, in his telling, solely on what Algeria supplies — camps on its territory, weapons, funding and diplomatic cover? And why does Algeria insist on preserving the « R » in MINURSO’s mandate, a reference to a referendum option that, he recalled, a former UN secretary-general had already called unworkable back in 2000?
The remaining questions turned to the human dimension of the dispute. Hilale pressed Algeria on its refusal to allow a census of the Tindouf camp population after fifty years, on its rejection of durable solutions that could end what he called a situation of captivity rather than temporary transit, and on its resistance to widening the Personal Envoy’s consultations to include Sahrawis from the southern provinces, the diaspora and Tindouf itself.
He closed with a four-point summary: a Security Council veto can end a mission’s mandate, he argued, but it cannot rewrite history or Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara; six questions point to a single answer, autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty; both parties have already met face to face in Washington, Madrid and New York, with Morocco shouldering its responsibilities while Algeria, he said, shirked its own; and the real obstacle to a settlement lies not in Rabat or at UN headquarters, but in Algiers.
