NOUAKCHOTT – The Mauritanian President, Mohamed Ould Cheikh El-Ghazouani, received last Thursday evening in Nouakchott the personal envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, reports the Mauritanian Information Agency (AMI).
The meeting took place in the presence of the Mauritanian minister in charge of the president’s office, Mokhtar Ould Djaye, the chargé de mission at the presidency, Ahmed Ould Bahini, the acting UN resident coordinator, Kinday Samba, and the head of the office of the UN Secretary General’s personal envoy for Western Sahara, Michael Kontah, AMI reported.
The UN announced in early September that De Mistura would visit the region for consultations on the Western Sahara conflict, ahead of the release of the Secretary-General’s report to the UN Security Council in October.
The UN envoy first visited the occupied Saharawi territories, before holding separate talks with the two parties to the conflict, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front.
On Wednesday he was received in Algiers by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the National Community Abroad, Ahmed Attaf, with Algeria and Mauritania being two observer countries in the UN-led process.
On this occasion, Mr Attaf reiterated “Algeria’s full support” for the efforts made by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and his personal envoy, Staffan de Mistura, expressing his hope that these efforts will lead to the relaunching of direct negotiations between the parties to the conflict, “without preconditions and in good faith, with the aim of reaching a political solution that preserves the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination”, according to a statement from the ministry.
The minister also welcomed “the maintenance of the position of the Security Council, which considers the question of Western Sahara as a question of decolonisation, the treatment of which is governed by the activation of one of the pillars of the United Nations system, namely the right of peoples to self-determination”.
