According to a well informed source in Algiers, the DRS generals, the dreadful Algerian military intelligence services, have tried with all their strength to block the last negotiations on the Western Sahara. Feeling a great pressure from the USA to get President Bouteflika to consider a beginning of normalization with Morocco, the DRS hawks stuck their neck out. General Médiene (said Toufik) seems to have been disappointed by the declared willingness of Washington to push towards a Morocco-Algerian thaw, from the same source.
Signals in this sense succeed each other since a certain time, but it has become an evidence with the tour, in the region, of the American Under Secretary of State, William Burns, in February.
During his call at Algiers, the US executive has thus clearly notified to the Algerian President that Washington was in favour of a rapid solution for the Western Sahara conflict, especially that the whole region was threatened by the chronic instability. The solution should for certain preserve at the same time the interests of Morocco and Algeria according to number 2 from the State Department.
The latter has given some important argument, especially in a context particularly in disorder. Tunisia and Egypt have just dismissed from power two potentates after many weeks of demonstrations, punctuated with struggles in the streets. On its side, Libya, the neighbour country, has just started a civil war which seems to be an endless one. In front of the American determination, General Toufik has preferred to react by getting round. He has thus given strict instructions to the Polisario negotiators, closely supervised by the Algerian delegation in New York negotiations, so as to be very hard and avoid Moroccan proposals. A locking which has been imperturbably repeated during the sixth round in March, beginning June, all along the seventh round.
