Africa-Press – Angola. The reinforcement of cooperation relations in the most varied domains between the MPLA and the Polisário Front (movement for the liberation of Western Sahara) was discussed this Thursday, in Luanda.
The information was provided by the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in Angola, Hamdi El Jalil Aali, after an audience with the vice-president of the MPLA, Luísa Damião.
The diplomat said that relations are good and old, based on the principles of freedom, democracy and solidarity.
He informed that, in the field of diplomacy, his country counts on the involvement of the UN, for the liberation of part of its territories occupied since 1975, by Morocco.
He stressed that the referendum for the self-determination of Western Sahara, initialed in 1991, continues to be unfeasible.
The ambassador believes that the conflict may have caused more than 30,000 deaths and that close to 180,000 Saharawis are in exile, mostly in Algeria.
Morocco and Mauritania took over Western Sahara after Spain abandoned the territory it colonized from 1884 to 1975.
Mauritania, under pressure from the Polisario Front, the main Saharawi political force, abandoned the portion it occupied in August 1979, but Morocco retains two thirds of the territory.
It is estimated that the conflict with Morocco caused about 10,000 deaths until the ceasefire, mediated by the United Nations, which was reached on September 6, 1991, with the condition that a referendum be called the following year, which never occurred.
In 2003, the UN special envoy for the territory, James Baker, presented the well-known Baker II plan, which proposed to give immediate autonomy to the Western Sahara Authority during a transitional period of five years, in order to prepare for a referendum.
The referendum would offer the territory’s inhabitants the possibility of choosing between independence, autonomy within the Kingdom of Morocco or complete integration with Morocco.
The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) has been a member of the OAU since 1984 and was a founding member of the African Union.
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