By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 19 -- How can the Western Sahara “Group of Friends” set up by the UN Security Council not include any African country? Inner City Press put this question to South African Permanent Representative Baso Sangqu on Tuesday after Council consultations on the draft resolution Inner City Press obtained and published before the meeting (click here).
Ambassador Sangqu said, that's a good question. Inner City Press asked if it is his understanding that members of the Group of Friends, once the Group issues its draft resolution, are not supposed to negotiate to make it any stronger. That question, Sangqu did not answer.
Inner City Press has learned that in the Group of Friends meeting on April 18, France wanted to limit human rights to Morocco allowing in UN Special Rapporteurs. South Africa and others want to see an ongoing human rights monitoring mechanism in the UN peacekeeping mission MINURSO.
The interim compromise, pushed by the UK, is to invite High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay to visit Western Sahara and make a recommendation. That alternative is in the draft. The draft is new in that way: the Group of Friends did not reach a total agreement.
While the US has not commented publicly despite requests, Inner City Press is told that the US is not a meaningful supporter of a human rights monitoring mechanism in MINURSO. The US “holds the pen” on the issue, however, and Ambassador Susan Rice attended and presided over the April 18 meeting.
Afterward Rice declined comment on the place of human rights in the draft and MINURSO mission.
But as South African Ambassador Sangqu, described by the New York Times as having been “frog marched” (as a South African newspaper put it) to the Council to vote in favor of Libya no fly zone resolution 1973, put it, how can a country call for human rights in Libya and not Western Sahara? How indeed.
There are, sources tell Inner City Press, discussions of sending a mini-visit of UN Security Council Ambassadors on a trip to Western Sahara. The last such trip was in 1995. The US has blocked the proposed Council trip to the Middle East. What is the US position on this proposal? Watch this site.
