UNITED NATIONS: UN chief Ban Ki-moon has named Hany Abdel-Aziz of Egypt to head the UN mission in the disputed Western Sahara (MINURSO), according to a letter seen here Wednesday.
In a letter to the Vietnamese presidency of the UN Security Council, Ban said he was appointing Abdel-Aziz as his special representative to Western Sahara and head of MINURSO with immediate effect.
The Egyptian, a former army officer who has served with the United Nations since 1981, is currently head of mission support at the UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo.
He is to succeed Julian Harston of Britain, who quit as MINURSO chief at the end of February.
Abdel-Aziz s post is distinct from that of Christopher Ross, an American who is Ban s special envoy to Western Sahara tasked with reviving stalled talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement.
Morocco annexed the phosphate-rich northwest African territory after the withdrawal of colonial power Spain in 1975, leading to a bitter guerrilla war with the Polisario Front. It ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.
Rabat has proposed considerable autonomy for the Western Sahara, but argues that its sovereignty is a non-negotiable historical fact. The Algerian-backed Polisario demands a referendum on self-determination, with independence as one of the options. -AFP
