Robert M. Holley April 23, 2019 Recent news items reporting that the US delegation at the United Nations is once again promoting language that would establish some kind of human rights monitoring mechanism as part of the MINURSO mandate have left me scratching my head in utter disbelief. Until this latest misguided effort on the part of Washington, I had promised myself that I would not draft another article on
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Jean R. AbiNader April 22, 2019 A recent article from a UK news service questioned why King Mohammed VI was acquiring even more control over the naming of senior government than was intended under the 2011 constitution. It wrote that “Article 49…stipulates that appointments to key public institutions should be made by the Council of Ministers which comprises the government but is headed by the King. However, this advance was
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Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel (ret.) April 19, 2019 If it’s April, it must be another round of charades at the UN Security Council regarding the Western Sahara. And if this year is anything like the past, the latest UN resolution can be written by most Sahara watchers before it is even published. It will most likely call the Moroccan proposal realistic, credible, and serious, and will “take note” of the
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Robert M. Holley April 12, 2019 In diplomacy, artful ambiguity can be a useful tool, but it can also be a dangerous trap when clarity would have been the better choice. The United States allegedly has a policy on Western Sahara, but what is it? The deal the United States made with Morocco two decades ago stipulated that Washington would not support any negotiated outcome to the issue that
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Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel (ret.) April 3, 2019 The first encounter of St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malek al-Kamil in 1219 has long been a subject of great interest and the topic of several scholarly articles. In Morocco this past weekend, on the 800thanniversary of that first encounter, another Francis, Pope Francis I, and King Mohammed VI met in what will hopefully be an important chapter in this tradition
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