AFP
Yahoo News
Nouakchott (AFP) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Friday for Mauritania’s help in a territorial dispute between Morocco and a Western Sahara separatist group that has displaced tens of thousands in decades of fighting.
“Making progress on the situation in Western Sahara is also of importance here too,” he said, referring to Mauritania. “Numerous refugees share the same culture and family ties with Mauritanians.”
The United Nations has been trying to oversee an independence referendum for Western Sahara since 1992 after a ceasefire was reached to end a war that broke out when Morocco sent its forces to the former Spanish territory in 1975.
Morocco claimed the entirety of Western Sahara in 1979 when Mauritania withdrew from the territory, which sits on the west African country’s northeastern border and is home to around half a million people.
“I intend to make my contribution to the negotiations that are under way to settle this long-standing disagreement and lend my support to the talks so that the Sahrawi refugees can return to Western Sahara with dignity,” Ban said.
The UN chief met President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on Friday in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott as part of a tour of West and North African countries.
Tens of thousands of refugees from Western Sahara live in refugee camps in Algeria, which were built when the fighting began.
Ban was due visit the Tindouf camp in western Algeria on Saturday and hold talks with leaders of the Polisario Front, who are fighting for an independent homeland.
Local Sahrawi people are campaigning for the right to self-determination, but Morocco considers the territory as a part of the kingdom and insists that its sovereignty cannot be challenged.
A UN mission, MINURSO, is based in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune, where previous UN chiefs Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali have visited during their mandates.
