APA-Marrakech (Morocco) Spain’s former Defence Minister, José Bono, on Friday in Dakar, Senegal hailed the development progress made by Morocco in Western Sahara.
Speaking at the opening of the second International Conference for Dialogue and Peace of the Saharawi Movement for Peace (MSP), Mr. Bono, who is also a former president of the Spanish Congress, argued that “Western Sahara is not an occupied country, let alone a militarised one.”
“I want to defend the cause of the Sahrawis. That’s why I’m in Dakar today to do so. The most important thing is to defend the cause of the Sahrawis. Those living in the camps are suffering, and only 1 percent of them have access to university,” said José Bono, stressing that his country supports “the autonomy plan for the Sahara proposed by Morocco, which is the most serious and the most convincing there is.”
According to him, this autonomy plan is “an opportunity to develop the Sahara and a tangible solution to the centralism” of the Polisario Front.
“The Sahara needs a solution and the Polisario must negotiate. Spain, which has a long experience of autonomy, must help,” the former Spanish Defence Minister went on.
He deplored the fact that the African Union has recognised Western Sahara as a state, something that the UN has never admitted.
“This is an anomaly. Africa has two options: to help the Sahrawis to have a state based on problems, or to help them to find an autonomous solution so that they can live in peace and solidarity. But we must think in terms of the second option to help those who are suffering,” Mr. Bono insisted.
The MSP, led by Ahmed Barakilla, a former minister and Polisario ambassador, advocates a negotiated and consensual solution to the Western Sahara issue, which has been going on since 1974, when Spain withdrew from this vast desert territory overlooking the Atlantic, now under Moroccan control.
“After several decades of war, the Polisario Front should now consider another solution in the interests of the Saharawi people. The Moroccan proposal to grant autonomy to this territory is already a good basis on which all the players in this affair could start discussions with a view to a definitive peaceful solution,” the Saharawi official told APAnews.
In addition to Spain’s former Defence Minister, the second international conference for dialogue and peace was attended by a number of African and foreign personalities, including Domitien Ndayizeye, former President of Burundi and currently a member of the African Union’s Committee of Wise Men, and Rodriguez Zapatero, former head of the Spanish government, who took part in a video conference.
The meeting was also attended by a number of notables from Saharan tribes, as well as civil and political activists from the Sahara.
TE/fss/as/APA