RABAT - Morocco and the Polisario Front seeking independence in the Western Sahara voiced dismay over James Baker's decision to quit as UN envoy trying to settle their territorial dispute, but remained at loggerheads over his planned solution.
Morocco's Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa said Saturday that the north African kingdom regretted Baker's resignation announcement, but said it was the "outcome of the tenacity of Moroccan diplomacy".
However, in Madrid, the representative for the Polisario Front in the former Spanish territory, Brahim Gali, on Saturday described the senior US diplomat's move as "an explicit form of protest over Morocco's intransigent position".
Officials at the United Nations on Friday said that the former US secretary of state had sent his resignation letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan several days earlier, and Annan was due formally to announce it this week.
Morocco annexed the Western Sahara after Spanish settlers pulled out of the large, phosphate-rich desert territory in 1975 and the Polisario Front took up arms to fight for its independence the following year.
With a ceasefire in effect on the ground, the UN envoy attempted to have the rival sides agree to his Baker Plan for immediate autonomy during a five-year transition period to prepare for a referendum on independence.
Since 1991, a UN peace mission to the Western Sahara has cost more than 600 million dollars (500 million euros), but attempts to bring about a political settlement stalled first on the issue of who should be allowed to vote in a referendum and then Morocco's rejection of any poll.
Benaissa said that Rabat considered the prospect of a referendum as "obsolete and inapplicable".
Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara was "non-negotiable", though Rabat was prepared to give the territory "definitive broad self-government", the foreign minister said.
He also said the real problem was with neighbouring Algeria, which is home to thousands of Western Saharan refugees and which supported the Polisario Front in its struggle.
"The conflict in the Moroccan Sahara, which is the main political cause of Morocco and Moroccans, whether within the framework of the United Nations or elsewhere, is at root a conflict between Morocco and Algeria, which can only be settled between these brother countries," Benaissa said.
He told the Moroccan news agency MAP that Morocco thanked James Baker for "his sincere and praiseworthy efforts", but added that "the Western Sahara affair is a delicate and complex question".
For Polisario, Gali told Spain's Europa Press that Baker had quit as "an explicit form of protest over Morocco's intransigent position ... which mocks the international community and tramples on UN Security Council resolutions."
Baker's resignation also showed "the lack of weight and the weakness of the UN Security Council in enforcing its resolutions ... concerning the conflict," Gali said.
In New York, the United Nations has announced that Baker, who was Annan's special envoy, will be replaced by the official UN envoy to Western Sahara, Alvara de Soto.
In April, the Security Council voted for a six-month extension for the peace mission, while Annan had asked for 10 months, in the hope that a deal could be reached. Diplomats said the shorter term was for budget reasons.
Morocco and Mauritania split the desert territory on Africa's western coast in 1975 after colonial power Spain pulled out.
War between Morocco and the Polisario erupted the following year. Mauritania withdrew in 1979, leaving Morocco the whole of the territory. The late King Hassan II encouraged settlers to move south into the Western Sahara in what became known as "Green March".
This colonisation of the territory and voting rights have been among the issues on which peace plans have foundered.
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