ALGIERS - The United Nations envoy for the disputed territory of Western Sahara, James Baker, has asked the different parties involved in the conflict over the Western Sahara territory to send in their comments on a proposed UN plan by March 1, Algeria's APS news agency said.
Baker, a former US secretary of state, made the statement after meeting successively with the leaders of Morocco and Algeria and officials from the Polisario Front, which claims sovereignty over the territory.
Baker travelled on Thursday from Algiers, where he had met with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to the southwestern Algerian town of Tindouf, where he met with Polisario leader Mohamed Abdelaziz.
"We have asked the parties to give us their comments on the proposals before next March 1," Baker was quoted as saying. He has not so far revealed details of the latest UN plan to resolve the long-running conflict.
After his talks in Tindouf, Baker arrived in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott late Thursday and handed over a copy of his peace plan to the country's leader, President Maaouiya Ould Taya.
The official AMI news agency quoted Baker as saying that his talks with Ould Taya had been "very friendly and constructive," and that the Mauritanian leader had asked him "some very interesting questions." Mauritania borders the Western Sahara to the south.
The conflict opposes Morocco, which occupied and annexed the territory in 1975, and the Polisario Front, which has declared an independent state there and is backed by Algeria.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was declared by Polisario in 1976 and has its seat of government in Tindouf.
The SADR was admitted in 1982 to the Organisation of African Unity, leading Morocco to withdraw from the pan-African body, which last year was formally transformed into the African Union.
Western Sahara is mainly desert but is rich in phosphates and has a long Atlantic coastline with prized fish stocks. Oil companies are also developing an interest in the territory.
Baker, who last attempted to resolve the dispute in 2001 with a plan giving Western Sahara considerable autonomy within Morocco, met with Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Tuesday and Bouteflika on Wednesday.
Previous attempts at a settlement have stalled on Polisario's insistence on a referendum on self-determination, an idea initially accepted by both sides as part of a Settlement Plan in 1991.
Since then Rabat and Polisario have disagreed over who should be allowed to vote in any such referendum, and more than 48,000 appeals against exclusion from the electoral roll are pending.
This has left forces deployed in an expensive UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) kicking their heels.
The next UN Security Council meeting on the dispute is due to be held on January 30, one day before the latest six-month MINURSO mandate expires.
The alternatives to a referendum are extensive autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty or a division of the territory, but the latter idea has made little headway within the United Nations.
Alternatively, the United Nations could shut down MINURSO and write off almost 12 years of work at the cost of 500 million dollars (euros).
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