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Guterres report on Western Sahara does not match letter and spirit of UN-OAU settlement plan

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Algiers, 18 October  2020 (SPS) - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ latest report on Western Sahara does not correspond to the letter and spirit of the UN-OAU (AU currently) joint settlement plan  and puts the victim and executioner on an equal footing, said Saturday the representative of the Polisario Front to the United Nations, Sidi Mohamed Omar.
The latest report by UN SG Antonio Guterres on the situation in Western Sahara "is not a comprehensive and complete report in its description of the situation." "It gives the Security Council the false impression that the situation is calm and that everything is going well while the region is in a state of turmoil, especially in Guerguerat, and the Moroccan authorities continue their gross human rights violations in the occupied territories," Sidi Mohamed Omar said in a statement to the APS.
He said that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) had expressed its "dissatisfaction" in this regard, through its president and secretary general of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, in a letter he sent to the UN SG and the current President of the Security Council, dated 6 October.
For the Sahrawi side, the report that supposed to be objective and to reflect the reality of the situation in the region was "biased" and "puts the victim and executioner on an equal footing", Mr. Sidi Mohamed Omar explained.
However, the situation in the region is far from normal since the Moroccan occupation continues to terrorize the Saharawis in the occupied territories and continues its systematic violations of the ceasefire in Guerguerat, in full view of the United Nations Mission for the referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), underlined the representative of the Polisario Front to the UN.
Thus, he said, Guterres' report "does not correspond to the letter and spirit of the joint UN-OAU (AU) settlement plan or Security Council resolutions." Moreover, it largely echoes the vision of the Moroccan occupation, which limits the mandate of MINURSO to the monitoring of the ceasefire."
Yet it is well known that MINURSO's mandate has not changed since its inception in 1991, he noted. (SPS)
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