It is urgent to "find a fair, lasting and mutually accepted political solution" to the Sahara issue, said, here Tuesday, king Juan Carlos of Spain.


     "It is urgent, as it had been recently underlined by my government, to find a fair, lasting and mutually accepted political solution" to the Sahara issue, a solution that provides for "free determination", said the Spanish king, who arrived Tuesday in Algeria on a three-day official visit.
 
    This solution should be achieved through dialog between the parties within the framework of the UN, said king Juan Carlos.
 
    Morocco is crafting the autonomy project to solve the conflict which broke out in 1976 when the Algeria-backed separatists laid claims to the Sahara, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco a year earlier under the Madrid Accord signed with Spain and Mauritania.
 
    Spain’s Prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had underlined on the occasion of 8th Moroccan-Spanish high-level meeting, held on March 5-6 in Rabat, that Morocco’s autonomy plan should serve as a “means to activate dialog between all the parties in order to reach a final agreement in line with the UN principles.”
 
    Zapatero had also noted that his country “has welcomed with interest” the Moroccan initiative to submit the autonomy proposal to the UN, urging “all the parties directly concerned to activate dialog and negotiations.”
 
    Spain’s Foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, for his part, noted in an article published, Tuesday, by the Spanish daily El Pais that “Morocco has put on the table a new element, of indubitable interest, and deemed that this would generate a new dynamism of dialog so as to get out of the current impasse.”