According to sources close to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, phoned by the “Confidential Polisario”, talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front having just taken place in Austria, with Christopher Ross’s interventions, the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General, would have allowed to open a series of “discrete” negotiations between Morocco and Algeria, in the margin of official speeches. In fact, Algeria as well as Mauritania, invited as “neighbour” countries, have been able to discuss with the Moroccan delegation the conflict solution options within a kind of “peaceful” climate as qualified by our source.
Algerians, who want to find new arguments in order to restart negotiations with Moroccans, would have been embarrassed by the recurrent tactics of Moroccans which consists in asking for a reopening of frontiers, something opposed by the host of Mouradia Palace, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a hardly polite refusal which makes him in a complex regional and international situation. In fact, it has become difficult for Algeria to declare itself as not being part in the Western Sahara conflict, and at the same time refuse the reopening of its common frontier with Morocco. Some high ranked officers in the Algerian army would have decided to take part in the issue and start discrete negotiations with Morocco in order to find a solution for the Sahara conflict without loosing the parties’ face. Thus, the autonomy plan proposed by Rabat could be developed in a specific way, without giving up on what the Moroccans consider to be essential. According to our source, mentioning a real “schism” within the Algerian authority vision, the next official negotiations, which would take place once again in Manhasset, would be the occasion for Moroccans and Algerians to carry on a discussion that seems to have already started…
