Eduardo González
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares received the United States Representative to the UN, Michael Waltz, on Tuesday, following a high-level secret meeting at the US Embassy in Madrid regarding the Western Sahara conflict. No representative of the Spanish government attended the meeting.
The US Embassy hosted a secret meeting on Sunday between the foreign ministers of Morocco, Nasser Bourita; Algeria, Ahmed Attaf; and Mauritania, Mohamed Salem Ould Merzouk; the Polisario Front’s chief diplomat, Mohamed Yeslam Beissa; the UN Special Envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura; President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for Africa, Massad Boulos; and Waltz himself. The meeting concluded on Monday without any official statements from either side.
“I met with the US Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, following his meetings in Madrid,” Albares wrote on social media. “Spain’s foreign policy contributes constructively to solutions for global challenges. The role of the United Nations is indispensable for this,” it added.
Albares himself has held several meetings in recent days at the Ministry headquarters in the Palacio de Viana, Madrid, with several of the participants in the meeting. On Saturday, the minister received Salem Ould Merzouk and Ahmed Attaf, and on Monday, Staffan de Mistura and Nasser Bourita.
In all cases, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has limited itself, as usual, to publishing messages on social media with the customary praise for the good state of bilateral relations or, perhaps, with some references to other issues, but in no case to the Sahrawi conflict. In the meeting with De Mistura, Albares conveyed his full support for his work. Albares’ meeting with Nasser Bourita was the fourteenth between the two since March 2022, when the Spanish government made the unexpected decision to accept the autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
The meeting at the Embassy
The meeting between the parties was held with utmost secrecy at the residence of the US ambassador in Madrid, and the Spanish government’s participation was purely technical, to facilitate the meeting. Lacking further information, according to the online newspaper ECSaharaui (ECS), the parties committed to meeting again in Washington in March, coinciding with the month of Ramadan.
However, they did not reach any agreement on the establishment of a “Technical Commission,” composed of international legal and political experts and under US and UN supervision, tasked with studying the practical and implementation aspects linked to any framework agreement between the Polisario Front and Morocco. Another point of contention is the implementation of the right to self-determination, as Rabat wants it to be carried out through its autonomy proposal, a possibility the Polisario rejects.
Last autumn, Washington decided to take the initiative on this issue and relegate the United Nations to a secondary role. Massad Boulos has warned that the Sahrawi conflict is a “top priority” for the United States, and he himself traveled to Algeria in January to discuss the issue with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
In this context, Morocco reportedly presented a new, much broader autonomy proposal for Western Sahara in January than the previous one from 2007. This new proposal comes after the fifteenth meeting of the EU-Morocco Association Council concluded on January 29 with a Joint Declaration in which the European side expressed its support for UN Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025), which “fully supports the efforts of the Secretary-General and his Personal Envoy to facilitate and conduct negotiations on the basis of the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco.”
That declaration also acknowledged that “genuine autonomy” could be “the most feasible solution” and welcomed “Morocco’s willingness to engage in good-faith dialogue with all parties involved to clarify the modalities of this autonomy plan and explain how autonomy would be implemented within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty.”
With this declaration, the EU unequivocally endorsed, for the first time, the surprising decision by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to support Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara in March 2022 “as the most serious, credible, and realistic basis for resolving this dispute.”
However, it appears that the new autonomy proposal presented by Morocco is not entirely satisfactory to the United States, which has called for a constitutional reform to soften Rabat’s centralist policies. Morocco does not seem to be very supportive of this proposal, believing it could encourage other regional demands, particularly in the Rif region.