The Polisario leaders are in a denial of the reality that reminds "of the last days of East Germany, in which only senior officials did not watch West German television or talk to their relatives in the prosperous West," the US investigative journalist Richard Miniter wrote.

The peaceful and legitimate demands of Laayoune's inhabitants were exploited by terrorists and ex-convicts with separatist inclinations to undermine Morocco's stability and unity, concluded a report by the fact-finding parliamentary commission on the events that have lately occurred in the Gdeim Izik camp and Laayoune.

 "It is time to settle the Sahara issue through a solution that satisfies all parties, because this conflict is a real obstacle to the development of the Arab Maghreb region and contacts between its countries, " said Monday in Rabat , the chairman of the Mauritanian Party for Unity and Change (HATEM), Mr. Saleh Ould Henenna.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit reiterated, on Wednesday in Rabat, his country's support for Morocco's initiative to grant autonomy to its Southern provinces, the Sahara.

The announcement of the dismantling by Moroccan security services of a terrorist network linked to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) confirms analysts' fears that the violence that occurred in Laayoune lays bare AQIM's aims in the region.