"This solution can only be envisaged if the Moroccan plan is extended in order to provide a way out of all the aspects of the conflict," the institute says in its report entitled "Maghreb and the European Union: Enhancing the partnership for a sustainable security", presented Wednesday in Brussels.
    "Autonomous management as proposed by Morocco would involve setting up legislative, executive and judicial bodies locally, and granting them jurisdiction to cover a range of fields," notes the report, adding that "direct negotiations between all the protagonists, including Algeria, must take preference and be given EU support.”
    The latest informal negotiations held between Morocco and the Polisario in New York on 10-11 February 2010, also attended by Algeria and Mauritania, "are an encouraging sign," says the institute, adding that "the parties’ decision to meet again soon is in itself a step forward which deserves support."
    In Morocco, "holding on to the Southern Provinces relates to a fundamental principle of territorial integrity. The Kingdom cannot allow a considerable amputation of its territory," stresses the institute, adding that "the Polisario cannot abandon the fight without losing its very reason for existing; this would also mean admitting that refugees have been living in exile in camps for 30 years for nothing."
    "The decline of the Polisario movement, which has lost the political and ideological support it enjoyed during the Cold War period, also leads to fears of a collapse in the fragile camp organisation. The new generation has much less tolerance for corruption within the SADR, led solely by the Polisario, for vote-catching politics applied when allocating international humanitarian aid," the report says.
    Morocco has been administrating and developing the Sahara since 1979, giving local populations a higher standard of living than in the refugee camps’, the report notes.
    “Whilst endeavouring to obtain the widest possible consensus in the country, Rabat wishes to organise a referendum to ratify the autonomy project by the people living in the Southern provinces. Given the need to reform the constitution of the Kingdom of Morocco to incorporate the concept of autonomy, Rabat also aims to consult the entire Moroccan population,” the report goes on, adding that “today, nobody knows whether independence of the Sahara is a viable option. The territory might turn into a grey area propitious to all kinds of trafficking and the proliferation of terrorism, ultimately leading to regional destabilisation.”
    The report recalls that the spokesman of the US Department of State said in 2008 that an independent Sahrawi state cannot be treated as a “realistic option” while the former special representative of the Secretary General of the UN for the Sahara, Peter van Walsum, considers that it is not an “accessible objective”.
    It notes, however, that “security in the area cannot allow a failed state, especially if the latter is used as a new alibi to strengthen tension in Maghreb societies and to keep them as trust territories.”
    “The more general issue of border closure between Algeria and Morocco, which is the main reason for the region’s limited development over the last few decades, must also be discussed. The EU could pay special attention to this issue as part of a long-awaited ambitious policy to promote regional integration,” the report says, noting that “the lack of regional integration and cooperation within the Maghreb, which have resulted in the ‘Non-Maghreb’ situation seen today, represents one of the area’s main weaknesses.”