Javier Fernández Arribas: “El MSP ha dado un paso significativo para resolver el conflicto del Sáhara”

The editor of this newspaper, Javier Fernández Arribas, spoke this Friday at the closing of the 'I International Conference for Peace and Security', organised by the Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The journalist defended the aim of the conference, which is none other than to promote the resolution of the Western Sahara dispute after 47 years of stagnation. A way out of the crisis from within the Saharawi framework, which would challenge the representation co-opted by the Polisario Front. 

Fernández Arribas, who recently had the opportunity to visit the city of Dakhla, stressed "the yearning and the need of many Saharawis" to resolve the problem once and for all, "to achieve a certain well-being, to have a normal life, prospects for progress and a clear and defined identity, which, why not, can be given under Moroccan sovereignty". "We have seen it elsewhere", added the director of Atalayar. 

For Fernández Arribas, "diversity is wealth", but he warned of the importance of curbing populist and totalitarian impulses in order to maintain stability. "There are many who benefit from a situation of conflict, of constant confrontation", he recalled.

The journalist valued positively the Moroccan proposal for broad autonomy under its sovereignty to resolve the dispute, "but this proposal must be endowed with content", he added, before congratulating the first secretary of the MSP, Hach Ahmed, for putting a document on the table which, in the opinion of Fernández Arribas, manages to take "a significant step" towards the resolution of the Western Sahara conflict. 

"Little has been said about the danger of instability that we are suffering in the Sahel", added the director of Atalayar in reference to the growing threats to security in the region as a result of jihadism and the military presence of Russia through the mercenaries of the Wagner group. "Perhaps after almost 50 years we are in a geostrategic situation that will facilitate the unblocking of the dispute". 

According to the director of Atalayar, this move has made it clear that "the Polisario Front does not want competition" and that the group "is not the sole representative of the Saharawis". The objective in this sense, he remarked, is to reopen the negotiating table in Geneva to give an account of this.

Fernández Arribas welcomed the presence of former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and MEP Juan Manuel López Aguilar because "it legitimises this third way", but warned the first secretary general of the MSP that the right thing to do would be "to involve the Popular Party (PP)" because, at the end of the day, for Spain it should be a state policy, of consensus between the two big parties. 

The director of Atalayar appealed to the responsibility of the media: "We journalists have a responsibility and we must be committed to maintaining a position of criteria that are not so intoxicated by opinion". "We have to work hard and well on communication to explain the facts, to educate and defend ourselves against accusations and attacks. We also have to have very clear ideas, convictions and a very broad back. Communication in this conflict is fundamental, to dissolve stereotypes and clichés", he told the audience. 

Fernández Arribas believes that after this event, Morocco should take note: "We must move from literature to mathematics".