Security Council Meets to Hear Briefing on Western Sahara

The U.N. Security Council Monday met in a closed-door session to hear a briefing of the U.N. Secretariat on recent unrest in the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Namibia, one of the Council's African members, had requested closed-door consultations on the situation in the territory following recent clashes between demonstrators and Moroccan troopsand police.

The 15-nation Council failed to hold planned consultations on the latest development in the territory because "there was no consensus among Council members for a briefing on that subject today," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said last Friday.

Moroccan largely controls Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, while the Algeria-backed Polisario Front is campaigning for the territory's independence.

The United Nations has been trying for more than eight years to organize a referendum to decide whether Western Sahara should be incorporated into Morocco or become independent. The vote has been repeatedly postponed due to differences over who should be allowed to take part. The U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, comprising some 300 military observers, troops and civilian police, has been trying to organize the vote, originally set for January 1992. It has also been monitoring a cease-fire between Morocco and Polisario since September 1991.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report last month that it was still impossible to set a deadline date for the referendum and raised the possibility that it might no longer be possible to hold one.

He said that he was asking his personal envoy for the territory, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, to consult with the parties on possible next steps.

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