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UN Envoy Seeks Peace in Western Sahara
by John Heilprin
The Associated Press Translate This Article
4 February 2008
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A special envoy for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is visiting Western Sahara this week seeking a solution to a decades-long dispute between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front.
U.N. mediator Peter van Walsum's trip to the region starting Tuesday is expected to run through Feb. 14.
He has tried three times since last year to negotiate talks between the two sides at a U.N. retreat in Manhassat, N.Y. A fourth round at the retreat is scheduled for March 11-13, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Monday.
The U.N. Security Council expressed support Monday for Walsum's efforts, citing ``the need to move the process into a more intensive and substantive phase of negotiations.''
There are concerns in the West that the desert territory, which has rich phosphate deposits and other resources, could be drawn into growing violence in the North African region linked to al-Qaida and other radical Islamic groups.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently met with Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri and expressed American support for the U.N.-led negotiations.
After Spain withdrew from the territory as a colonial power, Morocco took over Western Sahara in 1975, setting off a long conflict with the Polisario Front.
The two sides agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in 1991. But Morocco never delivered on its promise to hold a self-determination referendum for the territory's people, and Polisario guerrillas have threatened to resume fighting if the dispute is not resolved.
The absence of progress stems from Morocco's stance ``that Western Sahara is an integral part of Morocco's territory and that the Saharawi people have no right to self-determination,'' Polisario representative Ahmed Boukhari wrote Monday to the president of the Security Council.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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