Monday 24 February 2025 
The UN said its new envoy for the Western Sahara arrived in Rabat Wednesday on the first stop of a tour that will also take him to Algeria and Mauritania.
de Mistura will meet Moroccan officials in Rabat and then Polisario officials in Tindouf, Algeria, an area housing Sahrawi refugees, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a daily news conference in New York.
Tensions over the region rose after Algiers in November accused Morocco of killing three Algerians on a highway through the territory.
The same month, the head of the Polisario Front said it had decided to step up military operations, a year after a ceasefire with Morocco collapsed.
De Mistura was appointed in October, nearly two and a half years after the post became vacant as a dozen other candidates were rejected by either Morocco or the Polisario Front.
The envoy is also planning to visit Algiers and Nouakchott, Mauritania, to hear “the views of all concerned on how to make progress towards a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara,” Dujarric said.
A 1991 UN-monitored ceasefire deal had provided for a referendum on self-determination, but Morocco has since rejected any vote that includes independence as an option, offering only limited autonomy.
In 2020, the US administration of then-president Donald Trump recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory in a quid pro quo for Rabat’s normalising ties with Israel.
Algeria said Washington’s decision had “no legal effect.”
A UN Security Council resolution late last year called for “the parties” in the Western Sahara dispute to resume negotiations “without preconditions.”
Ahmed Achour