As MINURSO approaches the end of its mandate this Saturday at midnight (New York time), France and the United Kingdom are stepping up efforts to persuade members of the UN Security Council to accept a compromise that would extend the United Nations mission in Western Sahara, according to a source close to the matter contacted by Yabiladi.
The initiative by Paris and London comes after Russia vetoed a draft resolution put forward by the United States.
The two countries are seeking to prevent the UN mission’s definitive withdrawal from Western Sahara, a scenario that would recall the end of other UN peacekeeping operations halted because of deadlocks in the Security Council. Such was the case with the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force in Macedonia (UNPREDEP), which ended in February 1999, and the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), whose mandate expired in July 2009 following Chinese and Russian vetoes.