Western Sahara: Where Is Algeria?

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In 2007, shortly after Morocco tabled its initiative for autonomy to resolve the dispute in Western Sahara, David Welch, at that time the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, told a Congressional committee that the United States welcomed Morocco's proposal and found it "serious and credible." Conversely, he testified, "the Polisario proposal does not seem, in our judgment, to contain new ideas." The Moroccan initiative was a substantial goodwill gesture to address repeated calls since 2003 from the Security Council for the Parties to move towards negotiating a "mutually acceptable political solution," meaning a solution that would require fundamental compromise from all Parties.

Little has changed. Most of the international community still describes the Moroccan initiative in the same terms, "serious, credible, and realistic." And most still see nothing new in the Polisario's continued insistence on a referendum on independence that the UN Security Council abandoned as unworkable in 2003.

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