Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
07USUNNEWYORK512
2007-06-22 23:57:00
CONFIDENTIAL
USUN New York
Cable title:  

WAN WALSUM'S PRIVATE READOUT ON JUNE 18-19 WESTERN

Tags:  PREL WI AG MO 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L USUN NEW YORK 000512 

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/22/2017
TAGS: PREL WI AG MO
SUBJECT: WAN WALSUM'S PRIVATE READOUT ON JUNE 18-19 WESTERN
SAHARA TALKS


Classified By: Amb. Jackie W. Sanders. E.O 12958. Reasons 1.4 (B&D).

C O N F I D E N T I A L USUN NEW YORK 000512

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/22/2017
TAGS: PREL WI AG MO
SUBJECT: WAN WALSUM'S PRIVATE READOUT ON JUNE 18-19 WESTERN
SAHARA TALKS


Classified By: Amb. Jackie W. Sanders. E.O 12958. Reasons 1.4 (B&D).


1. (C) Summary: In a June 20 meeting, Peter Van Walsum, the
mediator of the June 18-19 Western Sahara peace negotiations,
told USUN and NEA that the talks between Morocco and the
Polisario had gone as well as he could have hoped. He said
the role of pro-Moroccan Sahrawis in the talks was unhelpful
and shared his impressions of the Polisario as cowed and the
Algerians as more flexible than in the past. The key
challenge ahead, according to Van Walsum, is to move the next
round of talks to a more substantive level by securing
Polisario's engagement on the Moroccan autonomy plan. End
summary.


2. (C) USUN Alternate Representative Jackie Sanders and NEA
DAS Gordon Gray met on June 20 with Van Walsum, the UN
Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, to

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seek his private impressions of the recent talks. Van Walsum
seemed tired, but pleased; while little of substance had been
achieved (as expected),the atmospherics had been far better
than anticipated. The Moroccans and the Polisario had both
elaborated their own positions at length, and each had
responded (with Van Walsum's prompting) to the position of
the other over the two days. Van Walsum said that he had to
intervene to calm the parties only two or three times
throughout the talks. The social aspect, at the negotiators'
shared meals, was "quite incredible," with the opposing
negotiators swapping in Arabic what sounded to him like
jokes. The exception to this rule was Khalihenna Ould
Errachid, Chairman of the Royal Council for Sahrawi Affairs
(CORCAS),who was snubbed entirely by the Polisario
negotiators, especially during meals.


3. (C) Khalihenna's role in general, according to Van
Walsum, was the glaring false note throughout the
negotiation. Van Walsum said that while he had not tried to
specify the composition of the delegation, he had urged the
Moroccans to be "responsible" in their choices and did not
feel that their choice of three Sahrawis as delegates met
this suggestion. Whenever the Moroccans would speak, they
would yield the floor to Khalihenna, which visibly irritated

the Polisario and diminished the positive effects of some of
the Moroccan statements that had seemed to intrigue the
Polisario. At one point, Van Walsum told us, he had a
sidebar with Moroccan Minister-Delegate for Foreign Affairs
Tayeb Fassi Fihri in which he pointed this out. Fassi Fihri
replied, "I am sorry, but this cannot be changed," a
statement that Van Walsum interpreted as meaning that the
extent of Sahrawi participation was the result of a royal
directive.


4. (C) The Moroccans, Van Walsum said, would have to make a
decision. They could negotiate with the Polisario, with the
hope of pushing them to an agreement, a path that Van Walsum
believed was showing real promise. Alternatively, they could
try to marginalize the Polisario by repeatedly and
provocatively calling into question its claim to represent
the Sahrawi people, as both Khalihenna's presence and the
content of his speeches seemed to be designed to do. While
the Moroccans had told Van Walsum that they were "shocked" at
the Polisario's provocative language, Van Walsum considered
the content of the Polisario's speeches to be more than
balanced by the CORCAS role on the Moroccan side. It raised
in his mind the question of whether the Moroccans were aiming
for a breakdown of talks and what he referred to as the "dark
scenario," in which the Moroccans' true goal in negotiating
was to get cover to unilaterally implement their autonomy
plan, with the help of sympathetic countries such as the
United States and France. Such a course, he said, would only
increase the likelihood of the situation deteriorating again
into armed conflict.


5. (C) This would be all the more unfortunate given that the
Polisario seemed to be in a corner, Van Walsum argued. He
had told the Polisario in private that if they were hoping
for the alignment of forces to shift dramatically in favor of
them following the next U.S. election cycle, they were
fooling themselves. No American administration, he conveyed
them, would be willing to see an independent,
thinly-populated, and weakly-governed Western Sahara. This
seemed to sober the Polisario, which had already been
disappointed that President Sarkozy seemed to be as
supportive of Moroccan efforts as his predecessor Chirac had
been. The Polisario had stayed on topic and had referred to
human rights only in passing, as an issue of importance,


rather than dwelling on specific allegations of Moroccan
abuses in the Western Sahara.


6. (C) Van Walsum also said that the Algerians were playing a
helpful role, verbally showing more flexibility than Van
Walsum had previously seen and intervening to calm the
Polisario down. They had only balked when, in his opening
statements, Van Walsum had made clear that despite the
evenhandedness with which the most recent SYG report had
treated the Moroccan and Polisario proposals, UNSCR 1745 had
given more weight to the Moroccan proposal and the
negotiations should accordingly give the Moroccan proposal
more consideration. (Note: Incidentally, Van Walsum said,
Morocco had balked at the rest of his statement: that because
both proposals were mentioned in UNSCR 1745, they should both
be presented and responded to. End note.) A member of the
Algerian delegation, replying privately to Van Walsum's
ranking of the two proposals, told him that "had this been
our understanding, we never would have agreed" to join the
talks.


7. (C) Still, none of the delegates walked out, and everyone
seemed pleased at the way that talks had progressed. All in
all, said Van Walsum, the outcome of the meeting was the best
he could have hoped for: a jointly signed communiqu calling
for a second round of talks. The negotiators had liked the
venue and had agreed to hold the next round there in August -
possibly around August 11 (one month after a July 11 UNSC
meeting that will consider the SYG report due June 30).
Further rounds of negotiations, Van Walsum indicated, might
have to take place in Europe to minimize the time difference
with the home countries. The second round, though, would be
more difficult than the first, which had been only the
statement by both sides of their positions and their
responses to the positions of the other side without any real
engagement on the elements of either plan. The next meeting
would have to have such engagement. Van Walsum believed that
perhaps the best way to prepare for such a result would be to
announce beforehand his intention to begin considering some
of the less controversial issues, and to solicit the input of
the parties on what those issues should be; he believed that
the appropriate time for this would be at the July 11 UNSC
meeting.


8. (C) Van Walsum said the USG could help this process in
three ways. First, it would need to convince the Moroccans
to stop hurting their own interests through inclusion of
CORCAS members and other Sahrawis. Second, and more
difficult, would be to convince the Polisario to consider the
Moroccan plan in detail in the next round of talks (Van
Walsum did not believe that Moroccan consent to consider the
Polisario proposal in any more than a cursory way was
achievable). Third, a positive press statement by the
Security Council after its July consultations would be
helpful.


9. (C) Asked about his view on other ways in which the
Friends could be of assistance, Van Walsum had no
suggestions. He noted the strong role that domestic politics
played in Spanish involvement in the Western Sahara issue,
adding that its constant calculation of how its interventions
would play domestically made it an unpredictable, and
therefore unsuitable, interlocutor on this issue. Similarly,
France was too tainted by its strong association with Morocco
to convince the Polisario that it was acting in its best
interest, no matter what France proposed to it.
WOLFF