New York — The Polisario Front has denounced a new attempt by the Moroccan Makhzen regime to "mislead" United Nations (UN) member states with lies and unfounded information about Western Sahara, reaffirming that the Sahrawi cause "is a question of decolonization whose resolution must inevitably involve the organization of a referendum on self-determination."

"In yet another futile attempt to mislead UN member states, the representative of the occupying state of Morocco to the UN has once again resorted to his +unparalleled skills+ in disinformation and outright lies to repeat a series of baseless assertions on the issue of Western Sahara and the Polisario Front," wrote the latter's representative to the UN and coordinator with the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), Sidi Mohamed Omar, in a letter addressed to the Presidency of the Security Council.

The Sahrawi diplomat continued: "In his statement at the substantive session of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonized Countries and Peoples (C-24), the representative of the occupying State of Morocco claimed that the decolonization of Western Sahara +had been definitively and irreversibly sealed+ since the territory's +return+ to its +motherland in 1975 under the Madrid Agreement."

However, explained Sidi Omar, "based on the international law, it is indisputable that the Madrid Agreement, which was signed between Spain, Mauritania, and Morocco on November 14, 1975, is null and void because it violated a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens), namely the right of colonized peoples to self-determination."

The Madrid Agreement is also contrary to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), issued on October 16, 1975, which ruled unequivocally that the documents and information submitted to it did not establish any link of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco, he continued.

Moreover, if the decolonization of Western Sahara had been "definitively" sealed in 1975, as the Moroccan regime claims, why do the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies, as well as the Security Council, remain seized of the matter "as a question of decolonization" in the case of the General Assembly, and "as a question of peace and security" in the case of the Security Council?" said the Sahrawi diplomat.