radioalgerie.dz.- The Polisario Front’s representative to the United Nations and coordinator with MINURSO, Sidi Mohamed Omar, said that the first visit currently being made to Western Sahara by the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is the result of the Polisario Front’s consistent position and the Saharawi people’s struggle against Moroccan occupation, particularly in the occupied territories.
In a statement to the Spanish news agency Efe, Sidi Mohamed Omar explained that De Mistura had been unable to visit Western Sahara in July 2022, because he had not accepted the “preconditions” that the Moroccan occupying state had tried to impose on him, in particular by fixing the places where the Italian-Swedish diplomat was to visit and the people he was to meet in the occupied territories.
The Saharawi diplomat stressed that this time, the occupying state had no choice but to abandon its obstructionist stance, which allowed De Mistura to pursue the mission assigned to him, by visiting occupied Western Sahara, before submitting a report on his visit to the UN Secretary General and the Security Council next October.
The speaker expressed the hope that this first contact between De Mistura and the Saharawis in the occupied territories will help him to learn first-hand about the situation in which the Saharawi people live under occupation, in particular human rights activists and political prisoners, as well as the oppression and intimidation to which they are subjected.
He also stressed that this visit was made possible thanks to “the constant position of the Polisario Front and the struggle of the Saharawi people, particularly in the occupied territories”.
The UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, arrived in occupied Laâyoune on Monday for a visit to Western Sahara.
According to the Saharawi Ministry of Information, this visit should be a perfectly natural event, in that it is in line with the United Nations’ responsibility towards the Saharawi territory and people, as well as with the missions and role of the UN official.
It “should not be an end in itself, but an opportunity for him to enquire directly and unreservedly about the results of the repression and the siege imposed in particular on the occupied towns of Laâyoune and Dakhla”, it was added.
