Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone conversation on Wednesday with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Burita to discuss the political dispute around the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a partially recognized political entity in Western Sahara that is also claimed by Rabat, the Russian Foreign Ministry said
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th November, 2020) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone conversation on Wednesday with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Burita to discuss the political dispute around the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a partially recognized political entity in Western Sahara that is also claimed by Rabat, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"During the exchange of views on developments in Maghreb, Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed Russia's position of principle in favour of the settlement of the Western Sahara problems exclusively through political and diplomatic methods based on the universally recognized principles of international law. He also urged all the concerned parties to strengthen the ceasefire regime and defuse the tensions that had developed in the last few days in the Guerguerat buffer zone," the statement said.
The ministers also discussed actual issues of the Russian-Moroccan relations, including in the context of the upcoming eighth meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which is scheduled to take place in Moscow in early December.
In October, the forces of the Polisario Front independence movement invaded the Morocco-controlled territories of Western Sahara by blocking passenger traffic and commercial transport of goods across the border with Mauritania. The movement also impeded the work of observers of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), according to the Moroccan state-run MAP news agency.
The authorities of Morocco were forced to launch an operation against Polisario Front in the buffer zone of Guergarat in the Moroccan Sahara. Polisario Front, on its part, accused Rabat of violating the 1991 ceasefire with SADR.
Morocco has been involved in a conflict with the Polisario Front movement over the control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was transferred under control of Morocco and Mauritania in 1975. In 1976, Polisario declared that it had established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. This partially recognized state claims Western Sahara but controls only a small part of it.
