UN-mediated talks on Sahara to begin next week in Berlin

Parties to the Sahara issue will hold this September 28-29 in Berlin a new meeting, under the auspices of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Personal Envoy, James Baker III, United Nations spokesman, Fred Eckhard, announced on Friday.

The meeting is intended to "resolve the multiple problems relating to the implementation of the settlement plan" for the Sahara and to "try to find agreement on a mutually acceptable political solution to the dispute," the spokesman told reporters in New York.

The United Nations has deployed in 1990 a peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known by its French acronym MINURSO. The Mission's aim is to hold a referendum to allow people of the Sahara say whether they want the former Spanish colony -- retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid accords-- to remain Moroccan territory or set up on its own as claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario guerilla movement.