On the occasion of the visit of the UN mediator Christopher Ross in Mauritania, an NGO has pleaded for further support to the Morocco-proposed autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
The Mauritanian Initiative of support to the Moroccan autonomy proposal called the peoples of the region and the international community "to remain attached to the bold Moroccan plan aimed at ending the Sahara conflict which is affecting us all."
According to this NGO, the proposal provides for a compromise solution meeting all the parties’ expectations.
In a statement released on Tuesday in Nouakchott, third leg of the UN mediator’s Maghreb tour, the Mauritanian Initiative reiterated its support for the "civilized" proposal presented by Morocco to find a solution to a deadlocked conflict that has lasted for too long and that has distressed all the countries of the Maghreb for decades.

Activists from the Forum de Soutien aux Autonomistes de Tindouf (Tindouf Autonomists Support Forum/Forsatin), seized the opportunity of the forthcoming visit of Christopher Ross to the Tindouf camps to call the UN mediator for the Western Sahara not to ignore the situation of injustice prevailing in these "camps of arbitrariness" in Algeria.
After his visit to Morocco, Ross is expected in Tindouf and needs therefore to ponder on the bitter reality prevailing in the camps, which are ruled by the Polisario and the Algerian DRS with an iron fist, Forsatin activists say.  They argue that the UN mediator should not limit himself to hear the official tale of the Polisario, but should rather seek to discover the reality and how the Polisario leaders usurp the Saharawi cause and use it to serve Algeria’s political agenda in the region.

The Polisario leaders no longer know which way to turn. With the unprecedented drop of humanitarian aid, an increasing number of idle young refugees try, by all means, to get rid of the grip of their leaders. Many of these youths, frustrated by enduring unemployment, lack of sources of income and lack of any bright prospects for the future, since the Polisario and Algeria hamper any settlement of the Western Sahara issue, prefer rather to throw themselves into the arms of traffickers of all kinds and of the terrorist groups roaming in the Sahel, sources from Tindouf said. News circulated these past days by pundits and Western media have stated that hundreds of Sahrawi refugees left the Tindouf camps to join Islamist movements in northern Mali, hoping to make some money out of the promised hiring bonuses. Monday, the Director of the International Center for terrorism Studies (ICTS) Yonah Alexander warned the international community against the danger of the collusion between the Polisario and the armed groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to security in the Maghreb and the Sahel.

The United States’ policy toward the Western Sahara issue has remained consistent for many years and Washington continues to believe that the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara is "serious, realistic and credible."
The U.S. administration has reaffirmed that this solution represents a potential approach that "could satisfy the aspirations of the people in the Western Sahara to run their own affairs in peace and dignity," states a joint statement released on Monday, October 15, on the occasion of the publication of the conclusions of the first session of the Morocco-United States Strategic Dialogue held on September 13 in Washington.
This first round of the strategic dialogue gave a new momentum to the already excellent relations between Rabat and Washington on the political and diplomatic scales and consecrated once and for all U.S. support to Morocco in the territorial conflict opposing it to the separatist Polisario front which is supported and funded by Algeria.