[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 93 (Thursday, July 8, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H5333]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      DO NOT IGNORE WESTERN SAHARA

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the King of Morocco is in Washington to tout 
the newly signed U.S.-Morocco Free Trade Agreement. I am a free trader, 
but I have serious reservations about this plan.
  Morocco today illegally occupies a country in West Africa known as 
Western Sahara. The King's government has promised people of Western 
Sahara, the Sahrawi, a vote to determine their own future. It has not 
happened, and it keeps delaying.
  A decade after that promise, powerful friends help the Moroccan 
Government postpone this vote and consolidate control over the occupied 
territory. The Sahrawis are a peaceful, pro-Western and prodemocracy 
people. Despite living under an illegitimate colonial power, they have 
established a deep-rooted culture of democracy capable of supporting a 
viable state. They elect their own leaders, many of them women, provide 
education and equal rights to all of their citizens, men and women.
  The only stability a sovereign democratic Western Sahara disrupts is 
a status quo defined by tyranny. We should keep that in mind when we 
vote on the trade agreement on the House floor.

                          ____________________