U.S. Western Sahara Foundation
21 June 2001
press release
US-Western Sahara Foundation Officers Call on President Bush to Intervene over Western Sahara Conflict: Referendum or War?
Suzanne Scholte, Chairman, and Carlos Wilson, Executive Director of the U.S.- Western Sahara Foundation, called on President George Bush as the leader of the Free World to intervene on the Western Sahara conflict.
"As the leader of the Free World, President George Bush's leadership is needed to resolve the Western Sahara conflict," Scholte said. "After over $530 million expenditures and nine years of broken promises, the United Nations has failed to deliver on the referendum over Western Sahara. Now, they seem to be advocating a third solution that is totally against everything the UN purported to be advocating at the outset of the UN peacekeeping mission (MINURSO)."
"All it would take is for Bush to call Kofi Annan," explained Carlos Wilson who recently met with high-ranking MINURSO officials. They confirmed to him that the referendum could be held this afternoon, if the U.N. would stop caving in to Morocco's obstruction of the process.
Both Scholte and Wilson predicted a return to war if the referendum is not held, because there would be no other option left for the Sahrawi people who have fought for 26 years for one simple objective: the right to vote on self- determination.
The latest U.N. report is predicted to advocate a third way which France and Morocco have been pushing for years, but which has been totally rejected by the Sahrawis because it is counter to democratic principles of self-determination and international legalities. Furthermore, the Western Sahara has never been under Moroccan sovereignty as affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1975 which upheld the Sahrawis' right to self-determination.
"How much longer will we make the Sahrawi people wait for their promised vote?" Scholte and Wilson asked. "Over the last quarter century, they have lived in desert refugee camps separated from loved ones trapped in occupied Western Sahara; they have seen their children and elderly die assaulted by Moroccan napalm bombs and blown apart by land mines; they have heard from human rights organizations reporting from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara of hundreds of their people being tortured and killed and disappearing into Morocco's infamous prisons."
It is incumbent upon President Bush as leader of the Free World to intervene and bring about the referendum, so they may return to their home land and live free, thereby ensuring stability in North Africa, Scholte and Wilson concluded.
BACKGROUND:
Once a colony of Spain, the Western Sahara is the only colony in Africa that has not been liberated. Spain promised the Sahrawis a vote on their freedom, but Morocco invaded their country before the vote could occur and now occupies most of the Western Sahara. Following years of war between the Sahrawis and Morocco, the UN brokered a cease fire in 1991 setting up the MINURSO peacekeeping mission which was to oversee a referendum over the Western Sahara. On January 17, 2000, the United Nations published the eligible voters list for the referendum on Western Sahara identifying 86,381 eligible voters living in the refugee camps and the occupied territory. The UN rejected approximately 100,000 applicants who were Moroccan who tried, but could not prove, they were Sahrawi. (Official Moroccan government documents were found that described to Moroccans how to pretend to be Sahrawi to become eligible to vote.)
Most Sahrawis live in refugee camps in western Algeria awaiting the promised referendum. Morocco continues to delay the referendum using every possible pretext, while the Sahrawis continue to suffer terrible hardship in these refugee camps in Algeria.
For more information, contact Suzanne Scholte (703)534-4313 or Carlos Wilson (858)458-9191, email: csahrawi@aol.com, U.S.-Western Sahara Foundation, a project of the Defense Forum Foundation, 3014 Castle Road, Falls Church, VA 22044. Phone: 703-534-4313; fax: 703-538-6149 or email: skswm@aol.com.
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