By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/un4wsahara121609.html
UNITED NATIONS, December 16 -- A day after this month's UN Security Council president ducked the Press after consultations on Western Sahara and the hunger strike of Aminatou Haidar, Inner City Press on Tuesday got him on camera explaining what took place. Through a translator, Ambassador Michel Kafando of Burkina Faso said that while some members want a briefing on Western Sahara, others oppose it. As a compromise, he is reaching out to UN envoy Christopher Ross, who is traveling to New York. Video here.
Afterwards, Inner City Press asked Mexico's Ambassador Claude Heller for his country's position on the briefing. We have to be cautious, Heller said. As such, his position differed from that of Costa Rica, Uganda and Austria, which have requested the briefing.
Subsequent reporting by Inner City Press gleans that Western Sahara is an issue for opposition parties in Mexico. It's not so much that the Frente Polisario has a crack diplomatic corps overseas. Rather, the issue of independence for Western Sahara is iconic for the Left. Hugo Chavez has spoken on the issue; that Cuba supports the Frente goes without saying.
So governments like Mexico's, by no means the worst in this regard, just want to stay out of the cross hairs. When they call the Western Sahara issue "sensitive," they are not referring to the dynamic between the parties, but rather to their own domestic politics.
Lost in all this is that the people of Western Sahara were promised a referendum on independence, under UN administration. The promise has been broken. And the stink will not go away.
Footnote: Earlier this year, while Mexico initially raised in the Security Council Sri Lanka's "bloodbath on the beach," after Sri Lanka made reference to the "sensitive, internal" matter of Chiapas, Mexico in fact gave some assurances to the Sri Lankan government that it would modify its position. This is how the Security Council works, or doesn't. This is how and why the members make decisions.And see, www.innercitypress.com/un4wsahara121609.html
