UN completes voter identification

The United Nations said on Tuesday its voter Identification Commission in Western Sahara had completed its work among three ethnic groups in preparation for a referendum on the country’s future statehood. The Commission finished identifying on Thursday some 51,000 eligible voters from the 64,000 people called forward, UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York. He said a provisional list of voters for the referendum on the territory’s choice between independence and integration with Morocco would be issued on 15 January. Since the beginning of the identification process, Eckhard said, the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) had called up at least 240,000 people and identified nearly 200,000 of them as eligible voters. However, he said, the UN was still to hear appeals by some 70,000 people deemed ineligible to vote. The hearings are set to begin on 17 January. In his latest report on Western Sahara, Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that such a high number of appeals could delay the referendum until 2002 or beyond.