Thank you, Ambassador Waltz, for meeting with the representative of the Polisario Front. There is, however, one fundamental fact that should never be left out of any serious discussion of this dispute. A significant portion of the population presented over the years as “refugees from Western Sahara” did not originate from the disputed territory at all. This is not a Moroccan claim. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents acknowledged this reality decades ago. A November 1977 CIA assessment entitled The Polisario Front: The Fourth Element in the Sahara Equation stated explicitly that “a large percentage” of the Saharans gathered in the camps in Algeria were not from the former Spanish Sahara. More remarkably, the CIA concluded that the camps contained a “significant number (conceivably even a majority)” of Saharans who had come from other parts of the desert, including Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Morocco. The same CIA assessment noted that the Reguibat constituted the backbone of both the Polisario leadership and its rank and file, while emphasizing that this tribe extended far beyond the boundaries of the former Spanish colony into Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali. It further concluded that large numbers of Polisario fighters appeared to have been recruited from Saharan populations that did not originate in the former Spanish Sahara. This cross-border reality was already recognized by U.S. intelligence before Spain withdrew from the territory. A September 1974 intelligence memorandum, principally drafted by the CIA and coordinated with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, described the Reguibat as ranging across southern Morocco, Algeria, Spanish Sahara and Mauritania. As I explained extensively in my 576-page book on the dispute, published more than two years ago, any serious discussion of the population of the Tindouf camps must therefore distinguish between people who actually originated in the Western Sahara and the much broader Saharan populations that were subsequently gathered in those camps. The CIA itself was making precisely that distinction nearly half a century ago.