PERU: Morocco's Foreign Minister meets with Mohammed Benaissa Peru's President Alan Garcia to rally support for Rabat's Western Sahara autonomy plan

Morocco's Foreign Minister Mohammed Benaissa meets with Peru's President Alan Garcia as part of a 10-nation tour of Latin America aimed at drumming up support for Rabat's disputed plan to give autonomy to the Western Sahara. Morocco's Foreign Minister Mohammed Benaissa arrived in Peru on Sunday (March 18) as part of his diplomatic tour of several Latin American countries. He was received in the Peruvian governmental palace by President Alan Garcia on Monday (March 19) to deliver several personal communications from Morocco's King Mohammed VI. Benaissa is on a 10-country diplomatic tour of Latin America to drum up support for Rabat's disputed plan to give autonomy to the Western Sahara. Benaissa has already visited Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Brazil, and is being accompanied by a high-level delegation from Rabat, including the ex-minister of state Khalihenna Ould Errachid. Rabat has already sent delegations to Europe, where it was praised for its efforts to resolve a long-standing territorial dispute over Western Sahara. The blueprint for the plan is to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council in coming weeks. Rabat insists the most it can offer is regional autonomy to the northwest African territory of some 260,000 people, but Western Sahara's independence movement rejects its proposals. Morocco seized Western Sahara in 1975 after former colonial power Spain withdrew, claiming rights over the territory rich in phosphates, fisheries and possibly offshore oil. That triggered a low-intensity guerrilla war between Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement that ended in 1991 when the United Nations sent in peacekeepers in anticipation of a self-determination vote that has not taken place.

ITN Source | March 20, 2007

Tags:. .march. .sunday. .vote. .king. .possibly