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UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara Horst Köhler is currently touring the Sahara. Appointed in September 2017, Germany’s former president set a plan months after taking office, visiting Morocco’s southern provinces.
Indeed, Horst Köhler is expected to hold talks in Laayoune, Dakhla and Es-Semara with officials from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), pro-Polisario NGOs and associations that support the Moroccan stance.
For the moment, Köhler is following the same path of his predecessor, Christopher Ross. At the end of his first tour in the region, the UN official will probably reach the same conclusions Ross and former UN Personal Envoy Peter van Walsum brought.
They have both reported while in office that it was impossible to find a middle ground on the issue.
The African Union
The huge differences separating the claims and stances of the involved parties have been exposed yesterday. Urged by Köhler’s attempts to amend the talks’ parameters, Morocco demanded the inclusion of Algeria in the negotiations.
To avoid mistakes made by former envoys (James Baker, Peter van Walsum and Christopher Ross), the German diplomat counts on the African Union, the pan-African body Morocco joined in January 2017.
Last January in Brussels, Köhler first met with the Commissioner for Peace and Security of the African Union, Algeria's Ismail Chergui. He then traveled to Kigali to meet with Paul Kagame, the current chairman of the AU Heads of State Conference.
Finally, Horst Köhler concluded his consultations in Addis Ababa, where he held talks with the Chairperson of the African union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat. Even while touring the region, Horst Köhler relies on the African Union’s upcoming summit, scheduled for the 1st and 2nd of July in Mauritania.
