Western Sahara: Russia's Veto Is a Historic Opening, Not a Setback

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : In 1972, just one year after China regained its seat at the United Nations, Hong Kong and Macao remained under British and Portuguese administration respectively.
54% : Nearly seven decades later, as Morocco's Autonomy Plan for the Sahara enjoys overwhelming support among UN member states, Rabat can now seek to remove the issue from the General Assembly's agenda.
51% : Under Rule 22 of the Rules of Procedure of the United Nations General Assembly, an item on the Assembly's agenda may be amended or deleted by a majority of the members present and voting.
50% : While Algeria is busy celebrating Russia's veto at yesterday's UN Security Council vote on the Sahara, Morocco now has a historic opening to strike the Sahara dossier off the General Assembly's agenda this coming December.
48% : Following Russia's veto of the US-sponsored draft resolution, and in light of the firm statement the Royal Cabinet has issued in response, I believe Morocco has a historic opportunity to deal a decisive blow to Algeria's separatist project at the United Nations General Assembly
48% : The committee has become a platform to which wide-eyed human rights "experts" and activists, as well as radical leftists with little or no meaningful historical or legal understanding of the dispute, flock every year in an attempt to undermine the political process sponsored by the Security Council and, in doing so, breathe new life into Algeria's separatist project. Honoring the legacy of the Green March I firmly believe that what happened yesterday during the UN Security Council vote was a blessing in disguise.
47% : Morocco took this step in good faith, believing that the United Nations General Assembly would exert pressure on Spain to accelerate the end of its occupation of the Sahara.
46% : Following China's example, Morocco could justify its position by recalling that it was the country that originally brought the Sahara question before the United Nations and that, had it not been for the pressure Rabat exerted on Spain, Madrid might have continued its occupation of the territory, just as it continues to retain control over Ceuta and Melilla.
45% : From the United Nations' perspective, self-determination became a formula for resolving the dispute only after Morocco, as part of its efforts to pressure Spain into ending its occupation of the Sahara, called for the territory's inhabitants, whose number did not exceed 27,000 at the time, to be allowed to exercise their right to self-determination.
45% : Spain and Algeria subsequently exploited this development, each according to its own calculations, to prolong the dispute and prevent Morocco from bringing the matter to a close. More than five decades after Morocco recovered effective sovereignty over the Sahara, approximately 35 years after the United Nations established MINURSO, and after it became apparent to the international community that a self-determination referendum was an impossible prospect because of fundamental disagreements among the parties over voter eligibility, the international community came to recognize that the only viable path toward resolving the dispute was a politically negotiated solution that would uphold Morocco's sovereignty.
45% : Mike Waltz, US Ambassador to the UN, has explained the Security Council's October 30 vote on the now aborted draft resolution rightfully invoked the countless statements by former UN Secretaries-General, from Boutros Boutros-Ghali to Kofi Annan.
38% : Waltz also cited other former UN officials, such as Erik Jensen, former head of MINURSO, and Bernard Miyet, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, all of whom agreed in stressing the impracticability of the referendum originally envisaged in the 1991 Settlement Plan.
35% : The instructive precedent of Hong Kong and Macao It is important to recall that this would not be the first time a UN member state has sought the removal of a territory from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories examined by the United Nations Fourth Committee.

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