Western Sahara's independence movement is considering resuming its armed struggle against Morocco if they aren't immediately given everything they want there is no breakthrough in UN-led peace talks in the next six months, its chief negotiator said yesterday. A frustrated Security Council on Thursday renewed a plea to Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement to end their decades-old dispute over the future of the desert land, which was seized by Morocco after colonial Spain left in 1975. A UN peacekeeping mission, which has served for the past 14 years in the sparsely populated northwest African territory, was again extended for six months amid an impasse in one of Africa's longest-running conflicts. "We gave 14 years to find a peaceful solution but the time has come to do something if nothing happens within six months," Emhamed Khadad, the Polisario Front's negotiator, told Reuters. "We are ready to defend ourselves with military action but I hope a peaceful solution will prevail... The key element on whether we return to war depends on whether the UN can solve this issue," he said in a telephone interview from Tindouf. The self-proclaimed government in exile calling for Morocco's withdrawal from Western Sahara is based in southwestern Algeria where over 150,000 Sahrawis indigenous people live in refugee camps. |