Morocco and Polisario negotiate in strict secrecy over the Sahara at the North American embassy in Madrid

The meetings between the foreign ministers of the different countries and their ambassadors to the UN with Staffan de Misturaspecial secretary of the UN envoy general for Western Sahara; Massad BoulosDonald Trump’s representative for Africa; and the Ambassador Mike WaltzUS representative to the UN, will be held at the US embassy in Madrid during the morning and afternoon of this Sunday, imgo in separate shifts, as Sahrawi people familiar with the matter explain to this medium.

Despite the pact of silence that has been imposed by the United States to hold the negotiations, EL ESPAÑOL has learned that they will follow the same scheme as in the January 21 meeting in Washington, when an exploratory round was organized to take the pulse of the parties and find out their positions. Subsequently, a round table will be held in March in the US capital.

Algeria has agreed to participate as an observer country, as will Mauritania, to support a solution that emanates from the free and expressed will of the Sahrawi people. For its part, Spain is not involved.

The United States chose Madrid, as it did previously in the case of China, to negotiate the tariffs. However, on this occasion, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not been in charge of finding the location of the meeting, remaining on the sidelines. However, the minister José Manuel Albares took the opportunity to receive his Mauritanian and Algerian counterparts at the Viana Palace, Mohamed Salem Ould Merzouk y Ahmed Attafrespectively.

No consensus

Everything indicates that no consensus will be reachedif we take into account the latest statements of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghaliat the closing of the IV International Arab Conference of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People held in Algeria this week. In this framework, Ghali reiterated that “the Sahrawi people have the last word in determining their future.”

In such a way that the Polisario cannot decide a position since to give a voice to its people a self-determination referendum would have to be held, which is what they have requested since the beginning of the negotiations, and the position that Algeria also supports.

However, both the United States and the European Union opt to resolve the conflict based on the Moroccan autonomy plan. Precisely, Donald Trump was the driving force with his presidential decree of December 10, 2010, where he recognized the Moroccan sovereignty over the entire territory of the Sahara and was later in charge of drafting the resolution that was approved last year at the UN.

For its part, the European Union recognized on January 29 in Brussels that “genuine autonomy could represent the most feasible outcome” and encouraged the parties to “present ideas that support a mutually acceptable definitive solution” for Western Sahara, in a joint statement following the EU-Morocco Association Council.

Despite the three rulings of the Court of the European Union of October 2024, which affirm that Western Sahara is a “separate and distinct” territory of Morocco and that the Sahrawi people have the right to self-determination.

Diplomatic route

When the UN Security Council approved resolution 2797 to resolve the Western Sahara conflict on October 31, 2025, President Donald Trump set a goal of 60 days to reach an agreement between Morocco and the Polisario Front.

The deadline has already expired, but the United States has continued to negotiate silently with the parties involved, both in Rabat and Algiers, taking into account that Algeria is the greatest supporter of the Polisario Front.

In addition to the recent meeting with the different parties in the United States and the visits of the US president’s advisor for African and Arab affairs, Moussa Fawaz, to Rabat and Algiers, in this new Trump negotiating framework, a new ambassador was appointed in Rabat and replaced the US ambassador in Algeria, Elizabeth Moore Aubin, who had been in Algiers for four years and had a long career abroad in Tel Aviv, Brussels, Toronto, Rome, Curacao and Hong Kong.

It is surprising that on this issue Donald Trump has not used his invasive peace maneuversas in the case of Palestine, and has focused on resolving the Sahara conflict through diplomatic means.

Political pressure and diplomatic strategies have not stopped happening. It even encouraged Morocco to expand the autonomy plan, one of the bases on which it is negotiated, which only had three pages.

For this, a commission was created chaired by royal advisors Fouad Ali El Himma, Taieb Fassi Firhr y Omar Azzimanwho dealt with diplomatic aspects, while the Minister of the Interior, Abdelouafi Laftitfocused on security files, according to the French newspaper Africa Intelligence.

Before the drafting of the current plan, which does not reach fifty pages, on November 10, 2025, a meeting was held meeting with Moroccan parties of the majority that allowed establishing a political framework for updating the project, whose first version dates back to 2007.

The next step will be to see what will happen with the United Nations Mission for the Western Sahara Referendum (MINURSO) in the month of April, which was extended for another year in October 2024 but which Morocco intends to interrupt, thereby losing the only international observation in the territory.

Consequences for Rabat

In any case, Morocco implements the autonomy plan I could suppose internal territorial conflicts because not only does it have tension with Western Sahara but it has historically had territorial, linguistic and historical claims in the north of the country, as is the case of the Rif.

Therefore, “these must be taken into account to begin negotiation processes for another type of decentralization that recognizes, as with the southern provinces, their autonomy or even their independence,” maintains the professor of Political Science at the University of Granada (UGR). Raquel Ojeda-García in an interview with Public Agenda.

That is, “there are two pending issues in Morocco that make it impossible for the autonomy plan to be a realistic, credible and feasible framework,” explains the professor. One is decentralization, not only administrative but also political, and another is having a democratic institutional and political framework.

Likewise, he points out that “the Moroccan advanced regions that cover what Morocco calls southern provinces do not coincide geographically with the territory of Western Sahara recognized by the UN. Therefore, a new administrative division (of the Moroccan regions and provinces) consistent with the border delimitations of Western Sahara“.