Annan asks special envoy for Sahara to convene related parties

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced in Paris Thursday that he asked his special envoy for the Sahara, James Baker, to bring together next May parties involved in the Sahara issue to reach approaches accepted by both sides to make the process move forward.

In a press conference he gave in Paris at the UNESCO head offices, the UN chief said the identification commission in charge of identifying persons entitled to voted in the projected referendum has so far identified 80,000 voters and received 130,000 appeals by persons who were not admitted as voters.

Annan, who paid an official visit to France, also called for reactivating the referendum process through a new meeting between concerned sides, renewing the UN security council's will to carry on to the end the referendum project in the Sahara. The United Nations Organization is trying to hold a referendum in the Sahara, a formerly Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid accords. The voting will decide whether the Sahara, where a cease-fire is enforced since 1990, will remain Moroccan territory or set up on its own as claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario secessionist movement.