Brussels, 22/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (Greens/EFA, France) requests in a press release published on Thursday 21 October that the EU approach Morocco to make it put a stop to the oppression of the Sahrawi people. She says that only a free and fair referendum organised by the UN would allow them to successfully resolve this long-lasting conflict. In the meantime, she calls on the EU to exclude the territory of the Western Sahara, including its territorial waters, from the bilateral fisheries agreement between the EU and Morocco.
Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, who belongs to the Western Sahara Intergroup, said: “With Moroccan colonisation of the Western Sahara, the inhabitants of that territory are not only victims of enormous repression whenever they claim their rights, but also of discrimination and abuse of every sort. They have become third class citizens in their own country. The Sahrawi of the occupied zones are witnessing the exhaustion or pillaging of their natural resources (fish, phosphate, etc) without receiving any advantage from this unlawful exploitation”.
Nielsen goes on to state that, for several weeks now, there has been a new and unprecedented phenomenon around some of the larger occupied towns of the Western Sahara. “Over 12,000 Sahrawi, men, women and children, are literally leaving their towns and going to live in tents”. This is the sign of a persisting crisis that US Special Envoy Christopher Ross, who is currently in the region, is seeking to reduce. He hopes to reactivate talks with Morocco and the Polisario.
The protocol in force on the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement expires at the end of February 2011. Talks on renewing the agreement have not been resumed. The economic daily, L'Ëconomiste, specifies that they should have started well before summer and that there is the risk, according to EU ambassador Eneko Landaburu speaking from Rabat, that the agreement will not be ready in time because of European Parliament assent for which procedures take too much time. At this rate, the daily states, Community boats will find themselves unemployed from next March on. (F.B./transl.jl)