Scene Setter – Your Senior Meeting at the State Department (Part II)

Obtain a senior level public announcement of a bilateral US/Moroccan commission to cooperate on issues of common bilateral as well as regional concern on both strategic security and political developments and in the MENA and West African regions. 

Obtain a fresh and unequivocal senior level statement on Sahara that repeats the “serious, credible and realistic” phrase and also incorporates an element stressing the urgency of solving this problem and urges the need for compromise based on “realistic” terms. 

Make sure that the Sahara issue has its own committee or special status within the commission. We believe that for the remainder of the Obama Administration, no further progress will be made on the Sahara issues unless it is part of a regularized commission discussion. Otherwise it will become a struggle just to keep the issue where it is. 

We have not been privy to all of the various diplomatic exchanges that have taken place since your last visit to Washington, but our read on the situation at State today, from what we discern from watching their statements and reports in the news, is that little has changed within the bureaucracy since you were last here. Clear statements on the Sahara issue are void in their discourse. State’s behavior in the General Ham affair leads us to conclude that some there still believe they can get away with “improving” relations with Algeria at Morocco’s expense, although State may not characterize it that way. And State’s less than fully enthusiastic and unequivocal endorsement of the run up and the results of the reform vote all leave us with the view that the NEA has not yet been persuaded that they need to take Morocco’s interests more seriously. Like Ambassador Mekouar, we were astonished and taken back at how little State seemed to understand about what was happening on the ground in Morocco in the run up to the vote. Janet Sanderson’s charges of “rubber bullets and tear gas” and “we’re watching you” approach on the issue was not just out of place, it represented a serious, indeed almost willful, misreading of events on the ground. 

In our continuing view, this kind of “dug in” resistance within the State bureaucracy can only be overcome by more frequent high level contact that lifts and regularizes the level of the dialogue to more senior levels and thus bears better prospect of reining in those within NEA (and elsewhere in State) who give every indication that they are still working a different agenda than the Secretary and her Deputy would prefer for Morocco. 

The timing for such a statement is perfect following another process filled attempt by Chris Ross. The arguments in favor of such a statement remain the same. We think it more than appropriate to draw attention to the fact that since your visit and the Secretary’s statement, State has consistently failed to repeat the agreed language. Instead, returning to the same formula you noted was unsatisfactory for Morocco on your last visit. This should also provide the opportunity to leverage that failure into a further demand that the statement include the two additional elements we noted above – urgency and the need for compromise based on realistic terms.

Tags : Sahara Occidental, Western Sahara, Frente Polisario, Maroc, Morocco,