Purpose of The Visiting Mission
The mission intended to investigate the political situation in the Spanish Sahara, as well as the conflicting claims to the territory:
- Spain had administered the Spanish Sahara since the Berlin Congress in 1884, but had announced it was pulling out of the territory. A Madrid-backed political party, the Partido de Unión Nacional Saharaui (PUNS), argued for a gradual transition to independence and demanded privileged relations between Spain and a future Western Sahara.
- The Polisario Front, an indigenous anti-colonial organization that was waging a guerrilla war against Spanish forces since 1973, claimed the country for its inhabitants, the Sahrawis, and demanded immediate independence.
- Morocco invoked historical ties between its royal family and the Sahrawi tribes, claiming the territory as its Southern Provinces.
- Mauritania referred to common ethnicity (of Sahrawis and Moors) and historical territorial connections, to claim it as a northern part of the country; Tiris al-Gharbiyya.
- The United Nations had since 1966 demanded that a referendum among the native population should determine the future status of the territory.
Read more about this topic: United Nations Visiting Mission To Spanish Sahara
Famous quotes containing the words purpose of, purpose, visiting and/or mission:
“I have always felt that the real purpose of government is to enhance the lives of people and that a leader can best do that by restraining government in most cases instead of enlarging it at every opportunity.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“According to legend, Dr. Sappington purchased his coffin several years before his death and kept it under his bed, with apples and nuts in it for his visiting grandchildren.”
—Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)