Zambia confirms break up with Polisario and its “SADR”

Zambia confirmed on Saturday, through its Foreign Minister, Harry Kalaba, that it withdrew its recognition of the pseudo “SADR”, self-proclaimed by the Polisario, and severed all its ties with the entity.

In a statement to the Moroccan news agency “MAP”, the Zambian top diplomat renewed his country’s position on the issue of Western Sahara as he had already explained it during a visit in Rabat last July.

“I reiterate my statement made in Rabat on July 9, 2016,” he said. Kalaba had then announced Zambia’s decision to withdraw its recognition of the “SADR” and to severe all its ties with that entity.

Zambia, he added, “is actually willing to contribute constructively to these efforts, through a neutral position open to the stakeholders,” and to continue supporting “the efforts of the United Nations to reach a final settlement to the regional dispute over Western Sahara.”

In another development, King Mohammed VI called on UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres on Friday (February 24) to express his concerns about the “repeated incursions by Polisario elements in the Guerguarat region in the Moroccan Sahara.”

Indeed, since October 2016, a group of armed militiamen of the Polisario took position in the buffer zone near the Moroccan border post of Guerguarat, and started hindering the traffic of freight carriers between Morocco and Mauritania.

Guterres promptly responded to the concerns of the King of Morocco. In a statement released by his spokesman Saturday, the UN Secretary General underscored that “regular commercial traffic should not be obstructed and that no action should be taken, which may constitute a change to the status quo of the Buffer Strip.”

It is quite clear that through his message, the UN chief indirectly addresses the Polisario outlaws who are brandishing their Kalashnikovs in the demilitarized area, monitored by the MINURSO”, in a flagrant violation of the ceasefire established in 1991.

After they suffered serious setbacks and lost a lot of ground in their diplomatic battle about the Moroccan Sahara, the Polisario and its Algerian protectors are now firing their last cartridges, although they are empty, in a desperate attempt to fuel tension.