Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

On W. Sahara, France Draws a Line in the Sand, Pillay Solution Floated, Moroccan Spin

UNITED NATIONS, April 30, updated -- As the Western Sahara resolution was taken up by the UN Security Council on Friday morning, possible compromises were floated, including one which would call on Morocco and the Polisario Front to work with the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay.

  France, however, was said to oppose any change to the text they shepherded out of the so-called Group of Friends on Western Sahara. The UK is a member of the Group. On April 29, UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told Inner City Press that while his country thought the text was balanced, it would be happy to see human rights language in the final resolution.

  Last year the fight devolved into a reference to the "human dimension," not human rights. This year, the question is what mechanism to use. Putting human rights into the mandate of the UN Mission MINURSO seems unlikely. Rather, the floated compromise would call on the parties to work with Navi Pillay.

  Polisario, however, says that one of the parities -- Morocco -- would resist working with Ms. Pillay. Morocco would, so to speak, draw a line in the sand on Western Sahara. Polisario would prefer that the resolution call on the High Commissioner to work with the parties, or with MINURSO. In the balance: the planned Council retreat to Greentree, about peacekeeping operations.

Navi Pillay, Western Sahara monitoring not shown

  Morocco's spin -- and we do try to cover it as well -- is that if Polisario wants a reference to the Human Rights Commissioner, they should agree to a census. They talk about damning reports by Danielle Mitterand's France Liberte in 2003 and OLAF in 2005. Their accusation: while Christopher Ross has convened meeting in Austria and Armonk, and is even trying to get re-opened the border between Algeria and Morocco,

  Polisario is deploying the "Trojan horse" of human rights, as the Moroccans put it. They mock the human rights records of Uganda and Nigeria. Their scorecard on the Group of Friends: France and the U.S. pro Morocco, Russia and Spain "leaning toward" Polisario, and the UK in the middle.

But, Inner City Press asked, why are there no African or even Arab countries in the Group of Friends? It was established a long time ago, was the answer. Maybe it must change.

Update of 11:25 a.m. -- the Council has gone into recess. Austria notes that there have been 55 resolutions on Western Sahara, 53 of them unanimous. Why not today?

Update of 12:02 p.m. -- a source exiting the consultations describes "a French proposal to change the perambular paragraph about the human dimension....We feel excluded by the process, the Group of Friends is composed of only four Council members and one non member [Spain], so eleven of us are excluded. So we expect from flexibility now." But the reference to Navy Pillay may not happen.

Question: does the revolve of at least some of the excluded ten foreshadow what will happen if and when the P5 Plus One come out with an Iran sanctions draft? Watch this site.

Update of 2:52 p.m. -- in the text in blue, from the Group of Friends, the paragraph is

"Stressing the importance of making progresss on the human dimension of the conflict as a means to promote transparency and mutual confidence through constructive dialogue and humanitarian confidence - building measures"

Now, after Mexico carried sandwich in -- bad sign, one said -- word is that Uganda and Nigeria would abstain. Would that be unity?

Update of 3:11 pm - Gabon's Ambassador tells InnerCityPRess, "We don't need to mention human rights! Human dimension, ok." How about human element? "Maybe."

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