The Polisario Front accuses France of “explicitly supporting” the Moroccan “occupation” of the Sahara. In a statement relayed by the SPS news agency, the independence movement condemned “the tendency of certain powers, including the permanent members of the Security Council (of the United Nations), to undermine the peace agreements and to evade international legality with regard to the conflict in Western Sahara.
The Polisario Front denounced these “attempts to undermine peace efforts to resolve the conflict through recent positions expressed by certain countries”, focusing on the case of France which “explicitly supported occupation policies, “annexation and absorption applied by the Moroccan regime”. For the separatist movement, no “just” and “final” solution to the Sahara conflict “can be imagined outside of a realistic and credible legal framework”.
Read: Sahara: the Polisario condemns France's international support for Morocco
The Polisario called for a “free and fair” referendum in which “the Sahrawi people would decide their fate and the final status of their land, Western Sahara”. In this sense, he thanked the “friendly and brotherly countries” including Algeria, which support the right to self-determination of the Sahrawis, reiterating his desire to “contribute positively” and “cooperate” to achieve “a just peace and sustainable” and “create a climate of coexistence and integration between their countries and their peoples”.
This press release comes almost two weeks after the Green March speech of King Mohammed VI in which he affirmed that the referendum was “inapplicable” and invited the United Nations to “assume their responsibilities” on this issue. “There is growing international recognition in favor of the Moroccanness of the Sahara, in addition to broad support for the autonomy initiative,” added the monarch, noting that “alongside this situation of legality, there is, unfortunately , another world separated from the truth which still lives on the illusions of the past”, in reference to the Polisario Front.
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