The Diplomat
The Polisario Front representative in Spain, Abdulá Arabi, hopes that the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will translate “into deeds” the rejection expressed to the decision of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to support the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara and reverse this turn in Spanish foreign policy if he becomes the new president after the elections on 23 July.
In an interview with Europa Press, Arabi again criticised Sánchez’s “unilateral” decision to lean “towards the option proposed by Morocco”, an autonomy for Western Sahara that the President of the Government described as “the most solid, credible and realistic basis” for resolving the conflict in the letter he sent in March 2022 to Mohamed VI.
The Polisario representative indicates that they have “dialogue” with all political parties, including the PP, whose congress in 2022 in Seville, where Feijóo was elected leader, they attended. In the meetings held with the ‘populares’, their public statements and the parliamentary initiatives that they have supported both in Congress and in the Senate “have expressed their disagreement with this turn of the President of the Government”, he recalls.
Thus, these ‘words’, Arabi maintains, should be translated into ‘deeds’, that is, a reversal, given that the PP has shown its ‘disagreement with a decision that it considers not to be in line with Spain’s traditional position, which dissociates itself from international law and therefore falls outside the framework of the United Nations’. “Therefore, a possible PP government would have to take these issues into account”, he points out.
As far as the PSOE is concerned, he acknowledges that there are still no political relations, nor are there any with the government, as a result of Sánchez’s turnaround. “As a condition, we have asked for this decision to be reversed and for a return to the path of international law, but so far this has not happened and we continue in the same way”, he stresses.
However, he clarifies that they are still “trying to maintain some dialogue in the hope that the PSOE has to change its position and return to the resolutions of its last congress, which clearly speaks of the defence of the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and the defence of the United Nations framework as the best solution for Western Sahara”.
On another matter, with regard to the expiry on 17 July next of the fishing agreement between the EU and Morocco, pending a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) before the end of the year, Arabi insists that this agreement cannot include “the natural resources of Western Sahara”.
In this sense, he acknowledged that in practice this means that Spanish vessels fishing in these waters will have to leave after that date, but expressed the Polisario’s willingness to negotiate.
