Semi-recognized Western Sahara to Recognize South Ossetia

Could this be the start of a beautiful Western Saharan-South Ossetian friendship? After securing recognition from Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru, the breakaway region of South Ossetia has turned to the African continent in search of friends and found one in the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).


“Western Sahara de facto recognizes the independence of South Ossetia. Now we have to formalize relations de jure, with all that comes with it, including the establishment of diplomatic relations,” the de facto SADR Minister for African Issues Mohamed Yeslem Beyssat was quoted as saying by Russia's Regnum news agency.


The Western Sahara, like South Ossetia, is a disputed region whose claim to independence involves larger regional powers. Morocco controls two-thirds of the territory, a onetime Spanish colony; some several dozen countries -- including Nicaragua and Venezuela, both backers of South Ossetia's independence -- have recognized the de facto Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, now headquartered in Algeria, as an independent state.

Beyssat was speaking at a September 26-27 international conference in Algiers that was attended by an envoy from the de facto South Ossetian government who met with de facto SADR officials. Both sides denounced Morocco (for the de facto SADR) and Georgia (for breakaway South Ossetia) as aggressors for using force to try and stamp out the territories' respective claims to independence.

A LITTLE SERIOUSNESS WOULD HELP TO LEAVE THE STAGNATION OF THE NEGOTIATIONS ON THE SAHARA

Recently a new round of “informal conversations” between the Polisario Front and Morocco has been celebrated to establish the bases of mutually acceptable a political solution that guarantees the right of self-determination of the saharan people. The result seems totally unsatisfactory But where it is the root of the stagnation? It is spoken of a side on the part of Morocco and their relatives by marriage, of which the solution of the referendum is exhausted because it is impossible to reach an agreement on the census to realise a consultation that defines estatus definitive of the territory, question that parecia that the Plan Baker II settled when allowing in the final consultation to vote to all the residents implanted by Morocco in the territory. Against this, own Morocco affirm that the self-determination with a solution negotiated and mutually acceptable for the parts can be obtained. Admitting this approach, it raises in a table of negotiation like previous condition that the other part self-eliminates (in this case the RASD-Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic- and his I exercise) to negotiate an autonomy from which it is excluded any possibility of a later consultation on the future from the territory that includes the independence option. They imagine that the Polisario Front raised to Morocco in a negotiation table as unique solution the retirement of I exercise Moroccan and that named a provisional govern saharaui that decided the future of the territory? Certainly everybody would say that it is a chimera and they would ask seriousness and realism to the Polisario Front. For that reason if it is wanted in serious a negotiated solution “mutually acceptable” and to leave the stagnation seems logical that it would have to be assumed that it is nonviable to raise proposals to the Polisario Front that they demand simultaneously, the previous self-elimination of the RASD and the resignation to that the independence option is contemplated in a consultation on the final statute of the territory. Roberto Barral Milladoiro-Ames (La Corunna)