MADRID, Nov. 21 (EUROPA PRESS) – A delegation of the Polisario Front will participate in the meeting of the Socialist International to be held this week in Madrid, which will raise as new leader the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, as observer members of a forum that also has Moroccan representation.
The Polisario, which enjoys a similar status to the British Labour Party, will be represented by several members of its national executive, including the envoy for Europe, Oubi Bachir, and the secretary general of the National Union of Sahrawi Women, Chaba Seini.
The Polisario Front’s delegate in Spain, Abdulah Arabi, will also take part in the main forum, explaining to Europa Press that the movement’s attendance at Socialist International events is “habitual”. On the Moroccan side will be the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), which is a full member.
Arabi affirmed that there is no meeting planned with the PSOE, although they are always “open” to talk. In his opinion, it is the Spanish Socialists who have “excluded themselves” from the dialogue after Sánchez’s about-turn in March, when he endorsed Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
The Polisario, which maintains “suspended” relations with the Spanish government “pending a rectification”, insisted through its delegate in Spain that Western Sahara is still pending “decolonisation” and that it is necessary to apply the UN doctrine.
Arabi urged Sánchez to act in accordance with the usual positions of the majority of the Socialist International, which has always supported a solution within the framework of the UN that contemplates “the free self-determination of the Saharawi people”. He called for “coherence with regard to what is approved and what is applied” in this case.
He was also present in April at the extraordinary congress that the PP held in Seville, but for the delegate this does not imply any incongruence with respect to his involvement with the Socialist International. “We go to all the forums where the Saharawi cause is present”, he argued.
