HIBAPRESS – Shafiq Annouri
The Moroccan political analyst, Samir Benis, considered that the letter sent by the "Polisario" Front to the President of the Security Council is merely an Algerian attempt to alleviate Western pressure on it to accept a solution to the Sahara conflict, highlighting that it "evokes pity and reveals the extent of the despair reached by" the separatist front.
Benis, an academic and Moroccan writer residing in the United States of America, said in a post published on his Facebook account, that the Polisario "has been used since its founding to serve the agenda of the Algerian regime, which in turn was created to serve the colonial system." He added that he had previously spoken extensively in his book entitled "The Illusion of Self-Determination," which was published last year in English, about "the legal changes that have occurred in the file since the end of 2002, and in particular since the Security Council adopted Resolution 1754, which has become the main legal reference for resolving the conflict." He continued that he explained with "infinite objectivity and from the perspective of international law and customary international law that the resolutions of the General Assembly and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of 1975, which Algeria has been using as a paper to deceive international public opinion about the legitimacy of its position, have become obsolete and are no longer of any legal value with regard to the conflict." Benis stressed that this matter is the new reality of the conflict, "no matter how some academics try to say otherwise," adding: "As I said with great confidence that the Moroccan autonomy plan has become the only solution to reach a final solution to the conflict, and that its obtaining the support of the vast majority of influential countries in the international system has become a matter of time." But, the same political analyst explains, that "instead of the Algerian regime taking the political and legal messages contained in all the decisions adopted by the Security Council since that year, Algeria made a strategic mistake when it decided to adopt the ostrich policy." Benis noted in this context that Algeria could have "saved face and saved itself a lot of billions and diplomatic and political capital that it invested in vain to serve its separatist agenda, and to sit at the negotiating table with Morocco for several years to reach a political solution in which there is no victor or vanquished." Instead, Benis says, Algeria continued "in its arrogance and conceit, thinking that it could turn the tables on Morocco and undermine the decisive diplomatic breakthroughs it has achieved over the past two decades," adding that as a result, "the Algerian regime is trying to delude the international community, once again, that it is not concerned with the conflict, that it is not the main party that created it and prolonged its duration, and that the matter is in the hands of the Polisario." The political analyst continued that the letter addressed by the head of the separatist "Polisario" Front to the President of the Security Council is nothing more than "a miserable attempt by Algeria to ease the pressure it is facing during this period from the United States of America and other countries to bring it to a political solution that saves face and puts an end to this conflict."
