El AYOUN, Morocco - Families from the disputed Western Sahara territory, annexed by Morocco in 1975, were reunited here Friday after nearly 30 years apart as a UN programme to bring them back together got under way.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and a UN peacekeeping mission in the disputed territory in southern Morocco organised flights to Western Sahara from refugee camps in southwest Algeria, where many Sahrawi people have lived since war broke out in Western Sahara over the Moroccan annexation.
Around 20 people from nine families were flown from a refugee camp to El Ayoun, on the Atlantic coast, where they were reunited with relatives. They will spend five days in this coastal city before returning to Algeria.
After they arrived, some 20 other Sahrawis who live here boarded the same aircraft, specially provided by the UN mission MINURSO, and were flown to the Tindouf refugee camp in Algeria to be reunited with their families there.
All the Sahrawis involved in Friday's operation have been separated from their families since Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975, when the phosphate-rich territory was granted independence by Spain.
The Sahrawis made statements to the press on their arrival in El Ayoun in favour of the Polisario Front - the Algerian-backed movement which has fought Morocco for Western Saharan independence - and for an end to Moroccan occupation of the territory, sparking the anger of Moroccan coordinator of the visits Hamid Chabar.
He said that all parties to the family reunion operation had agreed to refrain from making political statements.
A UNHCR official, Redouane Nouessar, said the pro-Polisario statements were "regrettable" and vowed that the UN agency would do its best to ensure "they don't happen again" so that the humanitarian nature of the reunion operation can be maintained
Official Moroccan news agency, MAP, said the reunited families' emotions were "divided between the joy of being reunited with their loved ones and the frustration of being separated by an artificial conflict which, in their eyes, has gone on for too long.
"In all their statements, they expressed their love of the mother country and their wish that the question of the Sahara should be resolved within the framework of sovereignty and the territorial unity of the kingdom," said MAP.
The United Nations has proposed a string of plans aimed at resolving the issue of Western Sahara, the latest suggesting a five-year self-governing period for the territory followed by a referendum of its 300,000 people on whether to remain part of Morocco.
Polisario and Algeria welcomed the UN plan, but Morocco has said it had "major objections" to it would never bargain over the disputed Western Sahara region.
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