Italian MPs to contribute to a solution to the Sahara issue
Morocco-Italy, Politics, 10/4/2003

The Foreign Affairs committee of the Italian House of Representative has vowed to contribute largely to any solution that may bring an end to the Sahara conflict.

Gustavo Selva, chairman of this committee who was receiving, in Rome Friday, a delegation from the Moroccan Sahara, said his committee will support any political initiative to ensure the largest possible contribution to the settlement of this issue.

During the meeting, the Moroccan delegation briefed the committee chairman on the suffering of the Moroccan Sahrawi populations forcibly held by the separatist movement "Polisario" in the Camps of Tindouf (Southern Algeria).

The delegation also handed him a copy of a damning report published recently by an investigation team from the French NGO "France-Libertes" headed by Danielle Mitterrand, spouse of the late French president Francois Mitterrand, on "the forced labour imposed on Moroccan prisoners of war" held captive by this separatist movement for more than a quarter century.

The Italian MP who had himself undertaken a similar mission in the region, reassured the delegation of his committee's willingness to look into this matter.

The visiting Sahrawi delegation is made up of leaders of NGOs, and of human rights groups from these southern Moroccan provinces, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco under a three-party agreement concluded in 1975 between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania.

Previous Stories:
  Sahrawi repression victims want light shed on missing persons   (10/3/2003)
  Italian NGO vows to unveil human rights violations by Polisario   (10/2/2003)
  Sahrawi delegation in Rome to promote national cause   (9/30/2003)

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