MINURSO is not the oldest UN peacekeeping mission. That distinction belongs to UNTSO, the peacekeeping operation headquartered in Jerusalem and UNMOGIP based in disputed Kashmir along the India/Pakistan border region.

Recent news items reporting that the US delegation at the United Nations is once again promoting language that would establish some kind of human rights monitoring mechanism as part of the MINURSO mandate have left me scratching my head in utter disbelief.

So, MINURSO has been renewed for another six months and Horst Kohler will hold a meeting in Geneva in December. Does anyone expect Algeria or the Polisario to have an epiphany before gathering around the table with Morocco and Mauritania in Switzerland? Not very likely.

So much has been written about John Bolton’s “pro-Algeria” positions in the Western Sahara conflict, but the facts show that President Trump’s national security adviser is more of an anti-United Nations crusader than a self-determination champion.

I have heard a lot of oddly crazy options over the last 18 months about the future of MINURSO, the United Nations peacekeeping mission for Western Sahara. I say oddly crazy because some of them I heard directly from acknowledged experts on North African affairs.

After a few last minute grumbles from Russia and a few meaningless word adjustments, the UN Security Council has voted approval of a new mandate for MINURSO, the Western Sahara peacekeeping mission, now into its 27th year of a so far fruitless search to find some compromise political solution to

Formerly a Spanish colony known as Spanish Sahara, Western Sahara is the area of an ongoing territorial conflict between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi rebel movement POLISARIO (the Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro), backed by Algeria.

Since April 1 Morocco has launched an unprecedented diplomatic offensive to mobilize support for its position on the Western Sahara.

For some years now I have been trying fruitlessly to persuade my former colleagues at the State Department, and anyone else who would listen, that the status quo in the Western Sahara was not sustainable.