African leaders try to solve desert row

Press, 7 June 1983, Page 10

African leaders try to solve desert row

NZPA-Reuter Addis Ababa African leaders held private talks on the Western Sahara dispute yesterday to try to avert the possible final collapse of a summit conference which has already been aborted twice. The summit meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (0.A.U.) was due to open in Addis Ababa yesterday. But delegates said that the meeting might have to be postponed until today to allow time for heads of State and other officials to resolve differences over the Western Sahara, the most vexed issue in the organisation’s 20-year history. The 0.A.U., Africa’s biggest continental forum for political co-operation, is facing its worst crisis because of unprecedented failure to hold an annual summit meeting.

Two attempts to stage the meeting in Tripoli, Libya, last year broke down because of walk-outs over the Western Sahara issue, and Chad which polarised the O.A.U.’s membership and threatened its survival. At the heart, of the O.A.U.’s paralysis is a row

between Morocco and its more radical opponents over the Moroccan-con-trolled Western Sahara. Right-Left divisions over Chad also contributed to the two summit breakdowns in August and November last year.

More than 30 heads of State and at least 10 senior representatives have arrived in Addis Ababa for what the Ethiopian Foreign Minister, Mr Goshu Wolde, said was likely to be the biggest gathering of African leaders since the O.A.U. was founded to oversee decolonisation of the continent.

Mr Wolde told a press conference yesterday that the high attendence would represent “ a milestone in Africa’s ability to put its house in order.” Most African States recognise the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) as the legitimate administration of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. They see Morocco’s continued rule of the desert territory as neocolonialism.

But a group of largely pro-Western countries argue that the S.A.D.R. and its

military wing the Polisario Front, is not a State and cannot qualify for O.A.U. membership. Yesterday representatives of both camps held informal talks to try to find a way out of the impasse, which has deprived the O.A.U. of the ability to speak with one voice on main issues such as minority white rule in South Africa.

The crisis dates back to February 1982 when, at a routine budgetary session, the S.A.D.R. became the O.A.U.’s fifty-first member after receiving diplomatic recognition from a simple majority of member States.

No O.A.U. meeting has been held since then because of protest walk-outs which have deprived the 51member organisation of its required 34-State quorum. A second attempt to convene the meeting in Tripoli last November was abandoned without a quorum after Libya objected to the seating of the Chad Government of Hissene Habre, whose troops had routed a Libyan ally, Goukouni Oueddei, in June.