Karima Benyaich: "No queremos guerra pero no hay que provocar” (y 2)

The Moroccan ambassador in Spain, Karima Benyaich, assures that what her country is doing at the border crossing of Guerguerat is "ensuring the passage" as a "responsible country" and accuses the Polisario Front of repeated "provocations". "We do not want war, but neither should we provoke", he has affirmed in an interview with Europa Press.

Benyaich concedes that it is necessary for the UN to name a new special envoy for the Sahara, but believes that the fundamental problem is the "provocations" of the Polisario and asks that it be emphasized that Morocco is "a stable country, a serious country, a country 
Asked about the Spanish position on the dispute, she recalled that the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, had already said that "the centrality" of resolving the problem of the Sahara lies with the UN.
Morocco, however, insists that the solution must be "just, pragmatic, lasting and within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty and territorial integrity".

Benyaich defends that it was the UN's own special envoys who said that it is not possible to organise a referendum because "the people are moving from one place to another" and insists on the Moroccan proposal of "advanced autonomy within the framework of regionalisation" which is already in the Moroccan Constitution of 2011.
In the same line, he has defended that self-determination does not necessarily have to be independence, but can be translated into association or integration. "The only solution is an advanced autonomy within the framework of our territorial integrity," he stressed.

The ambassador believes that "people do not know the situation in the country" and defends that, in Guerguerat, Morocco is guaranteeing trade not only between Morocco but between Africa and Europe. According to her, on November 13, the Moroccan Navy dissolved "in a peaceful manner, making a cordon of security" and "in full respect of international legality" the protest that had begun on October 21.
Benyaich accused the Polisario Front of using "women and children as human shields", of burning the materials with which they had camped and of resorting to "fake news" as "they are used to doing". "What they did was declare war on Morocco and lift the ceasefire", he says.

"The Polisario is losing support"

Furthermore, he has assured that the Moroccan intervention "was welcomed at an international level" while the Polisario "is seeing that it is losing support" and that there are 165 countries that do not recognize it.
The Polisario, in his opinion, is a movement which is "a legacy of the cold war", which has "kidnapped" the people in the camps and is now weakened. Thus, he has expressed his "condemnation" for the conditions in which the refugees live in the camps in Tindouf, affirming that "they do not live even with the dignity of being refugees.

According to the ambassador, the Polisario does not allow the population of Tindouf to be censored for humanitarian aid "because their number is very small. She assures that two thirds of the Saharawis live in Mauritania or Morocco -- in reference to the area of Western Sahara occupied by Rabat and not recognized internationally.
Furthermore, he defends that "one cannot speak of the Saharawi people because the Sahara goes from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and they do not represent all that population" and that when the region was colonized in the 19th century there was no other state than Morocco "which has been a state for 12 centuries".