RABAT - Morocco accused Algeria on Monday of trying to wreck its proposal to give autonomy to the disputed Western Sahara territory by encouraging the separatist Polisario Front there to present its own plans.
Speaking less than a week after the plan was presented to the UN, Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa told a parliamentary committee that Algeria was attacking it "based on erroneous and unfounded grounds".
He said Algiers was "encouraging the Polisario Front to deceive the international community by tabling an initiative that has no other aim but to block our own constructive proposal".
On Wednesday, the day Rabat presented the proposal to the UN, the Polisario Front submitted its own plan advocating independence in the Western Sahara and "good neighbourly relations with the Kingdom of Morocco".
Benaissa said the Moroccan proposal was "an open proposition aimed at reaching a consensual and realistic settlement that could be enriched by suggestions from other parties during negotiations".
The Algerian-backed Polisario Front fought Morocco for independence in the Western Sahara from when the territory was annexed by Rabat in the 1970s until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.
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