UNITED NATIONS, June 4 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited Morocco and the Polisario Front to talks with neighbors Algeria and Mauritania.
Marie Okabe, a spokeswoman for Ban, said Monday he wants them to meet June 18-19 "in the proximity of New York" in an attempt to resolve the long-standing dispute over the status of Western Sahara.
The invitation to talks follows a request from the Security Council for Morocco and the Polisario Front to enter into negotiations without preconditions.
The U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known by its acronym MINURSO, has been in operation since 1991 to monitor a cease-fire between Morocco and the Polisario Front and to help organize a planned referendum on self-determination that never came about.
Status of the desert land on the western coast of Africa is at the core of a conflict that has lasted 30 years, including 16 years of war, stemming from 1963, when the United Nations declared Western Sahara a "non-self-governing territory."
The United Nations called on Spain to decolonize Western Sahara in 1966. By 1974, when Spain was readying to organize a referendum on self-determination, the United Nations, at the request of Morocco, supported by Mauritania, asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the status of the territory known up to then as Spanish Sahara. Mauritania and Morocco claimed Western Sahara.
In 1975 the court said neither side could claim sovereignty, and Spain signed over Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania via the Madrid Accords. The war began.
A cease-fire came into effect in 1991 and Morocco, which occupied most of the territory, was recognized by the United Nations as one of the parties to the conflict, the Polisario Front as the other.
