The Diplomat
The government has provided the new UN special envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, with a plane so that he can travel to the region and maintain contacts with the parties with a view to resolving the dispute.
This was made known by the Executive in a written parliamentary reply, to which Europa Press had access, to a question put by Vox, which had asked about the “concrete actions” that were going to be taken to support De Mistura, appointed last October.
In addition to “political support for the development of his mandate”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, EU and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, “has offered him the logistical support that Spain has provided to his predecessors, with the provision of a Spanish air force plane to travel to the region”, the government indicates, specifying that De Mistura has also been invited to visit Spain.
The Foreign Minister held his first meeting with the new UN envoy on 3 December in Rome. At that time, Albares offered him Spain’s support in ‘relaunching dialogue’ between the parties and the willingness to work closely with him with a view to ‘promoting the search for a mutually acceptable political solution’ based on UN Security Council resolutions.
In this sense, in its parliamentary reply dated 26 November, the government stresses that its position on Western Sahara “is constant”. “Spain supports a solution within the framework of provisions in accordance with the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter and following the resolutions of the Security Council”, it concluded.
De Mistura’s appointment came to fill the gap left almost two and a half years earlier by his predecessor, former German President Horst Koehler, who resigned for personal reasons. Under his hand, the political process was given a new impetus with meetings attended by both the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front, which controls the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
The name of De Mistura, an Italian-Swedish man whose CV includes former special envoy for Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, had already been strongly floated in May, when the Polisario said it had given him its support, but Morocco did not give the green light until September. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres himself acknowledged this summer that both Rabat and the Polisario had rejected more than a dozen candidates.
