"We know that arms and drug traffickers prevail in this vast poorly controlled area, which is the Sahelo-Saharan region. It is a haven for bandits and terrorists and a real boon for extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda, which seeks a place to get organized, somehow like the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan," Mr. Saint Prot told MAP on Monday.

    The dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed separatist movement, Polisario, over the Sahara dates back to 1976, when the latter started laying claims to the former Spanish colony, which was ceded to the north African country a year before.

    For Charles Saint Prot, also director of the "Geopolitical Studies" magazine, the murder of four French nationals in Mauritania on December 24, 2007, by a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the killing of several Mauritanian militaries and the threats that led to the cancellation of the Dakar rally “remind us that the Sahelo-Saharan region has become a haven for terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and terrorism.”

    “The danger concerns all the region countries: Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia as well as Niger, Mali and Chad. There is a kind of gray area spanning on several thousand kilometers between the south of Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa,” he added.

    According to the Director of the OEG, “a possible alliance between the Polisario Front, or at least a portion of the Polisario activists, and Al-Qaeda cannot be ruled out.”

    “It is therefore high time to put an end to the presence of an uncontrolled armed group as the Polisario, a separatist movement supervised, fed, subsidized, supplied with arms and ammunition and guided in the diplomatic arena by the Algerian regime,” he said.

    “The best way to ensure stability in the region is to settle the Sahara issue on the realistic basis proposed by Morocco, which enjoys a powerful consensus at home and abroad,” he concluded.

    Morocco proposed early 2007 a plan to grant substantial autonomy to its southern provinces. This initiative has created a negotiations process that started last June in Manhasset. These UN-led talks continued in August and January in conformity with UN Security Council resolution 1754 that called for negotiations “without preconditions” and “in good faith.” A fourth round is slated for March 11-13.

News and events concerning western Sahara issue / Corcas