UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara to expire amid US, Russia vetoes

The fate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara has been left in a limbo after Russia and the United States vetoed each other's draft resolutions on extending the mission that is over three decades long — just one day before the mandate expires. 

The peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, was established in 1991 to oversee a settlement plan and ceasefire between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in a territorial dispute spanning half a century.

Morocco considers Western Sahara, a mineral-rich former Spanish colony, as its territory,

The Polisario Front, which is supported by Algeria and represents the indigenous Sahrawi people, seeks to establish an independent state called the Sahrawi Republic.

US and Russia wield vetoes

On Friday, the US tabled a draft resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) that would have extended the mandate for one year, while making a Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara the only basis for negotiations to settle the conflict, and cutting the mission's military component.

Last year, the UNSC backed Morocco's autonomy proposal as the "most feasible" solution for the disputed territory.

Friday's failed US draft resolution would have gone further and rebranded the peacekeeping force from MINURSO to MINUSO, dropping the 'R' which refers to referendum on the territory's self-determination.

The US proposal was vetoed by Russia, which slammed it as a "unilateral approach."  A total of 11 of the 15 UNSC members voted in its favor and three abstained.

"We stress the fact that the Security Council cannot automatically pre-determine matters relating to sovereignty,"  Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said.

"The Security Council must not give a blessing to such a one-sided approach. Therefore we were compelled to block the adoption of ⁠the draft," ​he added. 

The US, with its own veto, then blocked a Russian draft that proposed renewing the mission's mandate for another year while preserving the same terms as before.

"Unfortunately, some members of this Council have used their veto to preserve the letter 'R' for referendum in the mission's name, even though the United Nations has not been preparing to hold such a vote for decades," the US representative to the United Nations, Michael Waltz, said after the vote.

Western Sahara: Caught between sovereignty and struggle

How did Morocco and the Polisario Front react?

Morocco's royal palace welcomed the failure to renew the peacekeeping mission and said that this "should mark the end of the Security Council's involvement and the removal of this issue from its agenda."

The Polisario Front's UN representative, Sidi Omar, thanked Russia for vetoing the US resolution that he said "would have undermined the free exercise by the Sahrawi people of their inalienable right to self-determination and independence."