Morocco's Proposal for Western Sahara

Prospects for a Way Forward?

May 10, 2007, 12:30pm – 2:00pm

About This Event

With North Africa in the headlines in recent weeks because of terrorists' actions, Morocco responded during the same period to a request by the UN for a proposal to settle a 30-year-old Western Sahara dispute that has long undermined regional stability in other ways.

On April 30, the UN Security Council welcomed the Moroccan initiative. The Council called on Morocco and the Polisario Front to enter into direct negotiations without preconditions to achieve a lasting political solution. Given the wrangling over the Security Council resolution, it will take aggressive action by the UN to bring the parties to the table to reach the kind of compromise that will permit the region to move forward and resolve effectively this increasingly dangerous threat to stability in North Africa.

Please join us for an engaging discussion with experts who can explore and enlighten on this important and insufficiently covered topic.

Featured Speakers:
Ian Lesser, Senior Transatlantic Fellow at German Marshall Fund of the United States
Rob Malley, Middle East and North Africa Program Director, International Crisis Group
Jacques Rousselier, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute
Claude Salhani, UPI international editor and a senior political analyst specializing in the Middle East/ North Africa

Moderated by:
Mara Rudman, Senior fellow at Center for American Progress, creator of Middle East Progress, a new CAP initiative

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Resources

Video

• Mara Rudman introduces the topic and the panelists
• Claude Salhani makes remarks
• Ian Lesser makes remarks
• Jacques Rousselier makes remarks
• Rob Malley makes remarks
• The panelists take questions from the audience

Biographies

Ian Lesser is Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, where he focuses on Mediterranean affairs, Turkey, and international security issues. Dr. Lesser is also President of Mediterranean Advisors, LLC, a consultancy specializing in geopolitical risk.

Prior to establishing Mediterranean Advisors, Dr. Lesser was Vice President and Director of Studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy (the western partner of the Council on Foreign Relations). He came to the Pacific Council from RAND, where he spent over a decade as a senior analyst and research manager specializing in strategic studies. From 1994-1995, he was a member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for Turkey, Southern Europe, North Africa, and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process.

A frequent commentator for international media, he has written extensively on international security issues. His recent books and policy reports include Security and Strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean (2006); Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (2003); Greece’s New Geopolitics (2001); and Countering the New Terrorism (1999). Dr. Lesser was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and received his D.Phil from Oxford University. He is a senior advisor to the Luso-American Foundation in Lisbon, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Atlantic Council, the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the Advisory Board of the International Spectator (Rome), and Turkish Policy Quarterly (Istanbul), and has been a senior fellow of the Onassis Foundation in Athens.

Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa Program Director, International Crisis Group. Malley directs analysts based in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Baghdad. Together they report on the political, social and economic factors affecting the risk of conflict and make policy recommendations to address these threats. The team covers events from Iran to Morocco, with a heavy focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the situation in Iraq, and Islamist movements throughout the region. Robert also covers developments in the United States that affect policy toward the Middle East. Prior to this position, Malley served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, 1998-2001; Executive Assistant to Samuel R. Berger, National Security Advisor, 1996-1998; and Director for Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, National Security Council, 1994-1996.

Jacques E. Roussellier, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute; Associate, Maghreb Center, Washington DC, writes for Jane’s Information Group. He served as a Specialist Ombudsman, the World Bank Group/International Finance Corporation from 2003-2005. Previously to that, he was spokesperson for the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Western Sahara, from 1999-2001. Earlier, from 1997-1999, he worked as Political Affairs officer for the United Nations Peacekeeping operations in Tajikistan and the Central African Republic. Prior to that position, he served as a Human Rights Advisor, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Mr. Roussellier received a Master of Theology, University of Geneva (1984); Diploma, Graduate Institute of Public Administration, University of Lausanne (1988); and MA and MALD, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (2003).

Claude Salhani is UPI international editor since 2003 and an a senior political analyst specializing in the Middle East/ North Africa and terrorism. He is also editor of the Middle East Times and a Senior Associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of World Affairs.

Mr. Salhani appears of a number of radio and television networks as a political commentator including CNN, French radio and TV Canadian radio and TV (in English and French) and various Middle East medias. He is published regularly in the Washington Times Commentary pages and has a weekly column in Dubai’s Khaleej Times.

During his 30-year career Mr. Salhani has traveled to 78 countries directing and reporting on major events. His reports have been published in major newspapers and magazines around the world, including The Times (London), the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union Tribune, Foreign Service Journal, Middle East Policy Journal, Salon.com, The American Conservative and many others.

He is the author of “Black September to Desert Storm,” contributing author of “The Iraq War” and is working on another book on the Iraq war due out in October.

Mr. Salhani has worked for UPI and Reuters and was based alternatively in Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Brussels, London, New York and Washington, DC.

His assignments included every major Middle East conflict starting with the Jordanian-Palestinian Black September clashes in Jordan, the 1973 through the first Gulf War, the Czech Velvet Revolution and the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and most recently, the war in Iraq. He was wounded three times while reporting on various Mideast conflicts.

Mr. Salhani was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

Mara Rudman serves concurrently as a senior fellow at Center for American Progress and president of Quorum Strategies, LLC.  Between 1997 and 2001, she served as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, and in an earlier position, as NSC Senior Director for Legislative Affairs.  In those capacities, among other responsibilities, Ms. Rudman advised the President and the National Security Advisor.  From 1993-1997, Ms. Rudman was majority and then minority chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College, Mara Rudman also is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and serves on the boards of the Middle East Investment Initiative and Dartmouth's Dickey Center for International Relations.