Press: Polisario brings back military confrontation threat

The Moroccan press deemed Friday that the letter addressed to the UN secretary general on the Moroccan Sahara by Polisario secessionists' leader, Mohamed Abdelaziz, "aggravates the situation of Algiers" and brings back the "threat of a military confrontation option."

The Algeria-backed Polisario separatist group lays claim to the Moroccan southern region, known as the Sahara. In a memo addressed recently to the UN, Morocco pointed at Algeria as a main party in this conflict, although this latter has always denied involvement in the dispute.

Mohamed Abdelaziz's initiative is "certainly suggested by Algeria" as a response to Morocco's memo to Kofi Annan, wrote "Aujourd'hui le Maroc" daily.

"Algiers has designated the Polisario chief to answer the Moroccan document" and try to "extract the Algerian government from a question in which it is involved from top to toe."

"All that is being cooked up in Algiers will have no effect because of Morocco's cause legitimacy," underlined the paper.

Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika "is playing with fire," warned "Aujourd'hui le Maroc," saying Algiers "repetitive provocations" harm all dynamics for regional integration, cooperation and fight of instability, notably of a terrorist nature.

"Algeria's choices are clear: political and military escalation, excessive armament, creation and maintaining of separatist conflicts, refusal of regional cooperation and normalization, and Morocco's 'pathological' diabolization," writes the paper.

"President Bouteflika's Algeria exists only through hatred of Morocco. (É) Its army is justified only by the existence of a virtual enemy westward," the paper went on.

Another daily "Assabah" denounced the threat of the "military option" which Polisario chief has brought up in his letter to the UN secretary general.

Polisario "does not have the means to engage in a war unless it counts on Algiers' intervention," commented the paper.

"Assabah" said there is a blatant contradiction between Algiers' official stance that alleges it only supports a "right to self-determination" while the "national Algerian council for the support of the Saharwi people" considers "the debate on the Sahara a national issue."

On its part, "Al-Alam" newspaper raised question marks on Algeria's intensions, pointing out to Algerian forces deployment in the borders with Morocco.