The closing months of 2008 saw the end of a chapter and the opening of a new one in the Western Sahara conflict. Over the past three years, the peace process in Western Sahara, what the United Nations considers Africa’s last colony, was under the guidance of former Dutch diplomat Peter Van Walsum, who lost his position as UN Secretary General Personal Envoy at the end of August. Taking up where Van Walsum left off, the United States put forward the nomination of Ambassador Christopher Ross – one the US’s leading Middle East diplomats – to mediate the three decades old dispute between the occupying power, Morocco, and the Sahrawi pro-independence movement, the Polisario Front.
in Mediterranean Politics, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 115-122.