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The nine-year United Nations effort to hold a "winner-take-all" referendum in Western Sahara is stalemated by fundamental differences as to who should be allowed to vote. The United Nations is pessimistic that such a vote can ever be taken, and the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker has begun a series of meetings with Moroccan and Polisario Front representatives to see if a solution can be found. The Polisario insists that no solution other than a "winner-take-all" referendum is acceptable, while the Moroccan Government demands that everyone it considers to be a Sahrawi must vote.
The protracted United Nations involvement in the dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Front1 over Western Sahara has been frustrating for all concerned. After nine years and expenditures approaching $500 million, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) has managed to accomplish in the Sahara what has taken similar UN missions elsewhere only a matter of months. Apart from successfully monitoring a very durable cease-fire, the sum total of the substantive work of MINURSO has been to develop a preliminary list of eligible voters totaling 86,381. More than 133,000 appeals against MINURSO's eligibility findings, mostly on behalf of applicants found ineligible, have been filed.2 If, as the Moroccan Government is demanding, the cases of the vast majority of those denied eligibility to vote are heard individually, the UN has said the appeals process could take as much as two years to complete.
In his last three reports to the Security Council on Western Sahara, UN Secretary-- General Kofi Annan has bluntly expressed his frustration. Having noted his "doubts about the possibility of achieving a smooth and consensual implementation of the settlement plan" and concern at the lack of an enforcement mechanism should one side refuse to accept the results of a vote, he asked his Personal Envoy, former US Secretary of State James Baker, "to consult with the parties and. . explore ways and means to achieve an early, durable and agreed resolution of their dispute."3 He emphasized that Mr. Baker's mandate included exploring "other ways of achieving an early, durable and agreed resolution" of the problem4 but said that Baker, following his second meeting with Moroccan and Polisario representatives in...