UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara ends after 35 years, UN chief says

Nov 1 (Reuters) - The 35-year-old UN peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara region will come to an end after the Security Council failed to renew its mandate, the UN chief said on Sunday.

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Morocco, which claims the Western Sahara as its own, welcomed the decision, while its opponents in the Algeria-backed Polisario Front expressed concern.

The Polisario Front has been seeking an independent state in Western Sahara since former colonial power Spain left in 1976.

A peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, has been in place there since a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.

November 1 would mark the start of the “liquidation phase” of the mission, with assets transported back to troop-contributing countries, UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

The end of the peacekeeping mission comes a year after the UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution that accepted Rabat's plan to give the territory autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the "most feasible" solution to the conflict.

Russia, which abstained in last year's vote, this year vetoed another US-backed resolution that would have cemented the UN's preference for the Moroccan plan while scaling back the peacekeeping force.

The Security Council then defeated a competing Russian resolution, leaving the mission to expire without a new mandate.

Besides monitoring the ceasefire, MINURSO was tasked with organizing a referendum that has never taken place due to disagreements over voter eligibility.

Morocco's Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told state media that the mission's reference to a referendum - the “R” in its name - was an "anachronism".

Rabat had been informed that Russia was going to block the US-drafted resolution, but saw it as "an opportunity to review certain rules of the game", he said.

Morocco's royal palace had said the non-renewal of the mission was a "significant development" towards withdrawing the Western Sahara issue from consideration by the Security Council.

Algeria's Foreign Ministry on Saturday expressed "deep regret" over the non-renewal, blaming the "excessive bias" of the US towards Morocco's position.

The Polisario said in a statement it was "concerned at the deadlock in the Security Council meeting."

(Reporting by North Africa Bureau, editing by Alexander Dziadosz and Chizu Nomiyama )

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