The Diplomat
The Government of Spain yesterday congratulated Staffan de Mistura on his appointment as the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy for Western Sahara.
“Spain supports the central role of the United Nations in the search for a solution in accordance with the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Therefore, “Spain offers its full support to the new personal envoy of the Secretary-General in his role to promote understanding between the parties and stability in the region,” it added.
Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura, a former UN envoy in Syria, will fill a post that had remained vacant since May 2019, when former German President Horst Koehler resigned for health reasons. During his tenure, Koehler managed to organize two rounds of contacts between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front, but since he left office the situation is at a standstill.
The Polisario Front already showed its support for Mistura at the end of last April, after his name appeared on the shortlist of candidates. For its part, the Moroccan government gave its approval to his nomination in mid-September, which finally allowed the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, to announce his appointment as head of the United Nations Mission for Western Sahara (MINURSO).
For its part, the European Union yesterday congratulated Staffan de Mistura and expressed its readiness to support his efforts to relaunch negotiations for a “fair and “mutually acceptable” solution. “We are confident that, as an incredible diplomat with long experience in the region and in international negotiations, De Mistura will contribute to give a new impetus to the UN-led process in Western Sahara,” the European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a statement.
The Spanish government had already conveyed on several occasions to the UN Secretary General the “urgent” need to appoint a personal envoy to contribute to reactivate a “interrupted” political process. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, repeatedly insisted that the UN should have a representative in the former Spanish colony (occupied by Morocco since 1975) to “lead” the efforts to find a solution through dialogue both with “the immediate neighbors” (Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria) and with the members of the UN Security Council and with “a group of countries, including Spain, which have close interests”.
Among the priorities included in the External Action Strategy 2021-2024, approved by the Government last April, is the “promotion of UN efforts to reach political solutions in Western Sahara”. In addition, the Executive has repeatedly urged the parties to resume the negotiating process and to move towards “a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution” in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council.
