Mohamed Abdelaziz finds it very hard to hide his deep disappointment. Actually, during his recent four day visit to Washington, the Polisario leader did not succeed to have a one single appointment with an official of the U.S. Administration and the confident assurances he was given by Algerian officials before his overseas trip all proved deceptive.
Algiers had indeed carefully prepared the visit in close coordination with Kerry Kennedy. This fervent supporter of the Polisario in Washington ran left and right and struggled to schedule meetings for Mohamed Abdelaziz. However, despite her strong network of friends at the State Department, Kerry Kennedy failed to arrange a meeting.
According to informed sources, strict instructions were given to the entire hierarchy of the U.S. State Department, to avoid making a new mistake like the one made last April, when the U.S. tabled before the UN Security Council a draft resolution that it was later on forced to withdraw. The draft resolution, a scheme by Algeria with the support of Kerry Kennedy, had tried to expand the MINURSO prerogatives to the issues of human rights in Western Sahara.
Algiers’ current diplomatic offensive towards Washington actually started after the failure at the Security Council. Algerian authorities that had been very disappointed by the malfunction of their scheme opted for another strategy: to practice a policy of all-out infiltration in Washington, putting the Polisario and Kerry Kennedy in attack position.
This Algerian new strategy in the Western Sahara conflict has been driven by another threat coming from the United States. American officials, as well as political analysts and the media are increasingly aware that this conflict is in fact the result of the traditional dispute between Algeria and Morocco. This terrible assumption scares the Polisario and scares even more Algeria which tries by all means to contradict the reality.
