UN Security Council backs Western Sahara talks

The UN Security Council on Friday backed a US-drafted resolution that urges Morocco and the Polisario Front to prepare for talks on settling their decades-old dispute over Western Sahara.

The council renewed for six months the mandate of a UN mission that has been monitoring a ceasefire in Western Sahara since 1991 and also spelled out steps for a return to negotiations.

China, Russia and Ethiopia abstained from the vote, but it passed with support from all 12 other countries in the council.

The adoption followed a week of contentious negotiations during which Russia and Ethiopia complained that the proposed measure lacked balance and appeared to favor Morocco's stance.

The United States on Thursday put forward a revised draft that extended the mandate of the MINURSO mission until October, when the council will once again review the situation and decide on next steps.

The resolution renews a call for the Polisario to withdraw from Guerguerat, an area in a buffer zone in the southwest near the Mauritanian border, and to refrain from relocating offices to Bir Lahlou, in the northwest.

While the measure does not set a timetable for relaunching talks, it stresses "the need to make progress toward a realistic, practicable and enduring political solution to the question of Western Sahara based on compromise".

Morocco maintains that negotiations on a settlement should focus on its proposal for autonomy for Western Sahara and rejects the Polisario's insistence on an independence referendum.

The last round of UN-brokered talks on Western Sahara was held in 2008.

Morocco and the Polisario fought for control of Western Sahara from 1975 to 1991.

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