Manhasset negotiations

The Manhasset negotiations (also known as Manhasset I, II, III and IV) were a series of talks that took place in four rounds in 2007-2008 at Manhasset, New York between the Moroccan government and the representatives of the Saharawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front to resolve the Western Sahara conflict. They were considered the first direct negotiations in seven years between the two parties. Also present at the negotiations were the neighboring countries of Algeria and Mauritania.

The negotiations were a result of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1754 of April 30, 2007 which urged both parties to "enter into direct negotiations without preconditions and in good faith." The resolution also stipulated the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) mission extension until October 31, 2007.

The first round of talks took place on June 18–19, 2007 during which both parties agreed to resume talks on August 10–11. The second round ended with no breakthroughs, but parties agreed again to meet for another round. During the last round which took place between January 8 and 9, 2008, parties agreed on "the need to move into a more intensive and substantive phase of negotiations". A fourth round of talks was held from 18 March to 19 March 2008. The negotiations were being supervised by Peter van Walsum, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's personal envoy for Western Sahara.

The Manhasset rounds can be considered as the third attempt to reach a peaceful solution for the Western Sahara conflict. In 1991, a cease-fire agreement was concluded, which planned for a self-determination referendum (between integration to Morocco and independence as the SADR) in 1992. Because of disagreements over who should be allowed to vote, the referendum was repeatedly postponed. Morocco had brought large numbers of illegal settlers into the territory to outweigh the indigenous vote. Polisario insisted on the 1991 agreement's use of a Spanish census, taken immediately before the Moroccan occupation in 1975, as the basis of voter registration. Morocco, for its part, argued that these people were in fact Sahrawis, and that no vote could take place without them.

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