Senegal urges for release of Moroccan POWs in Southern Algeria

Senegal has urged for the release of Moroccan POWs that are detained in "deplorable conditions" in Tindouf camps in southwestern Algeria, said a joint statement released at the end of the 13th session of the Moroccan-Senegalese joint High Commission that convened Friday in Rabat.

412 Moroccan soldiers are still detained, some of them for nearly three decades, by the Algeria-backed separatist movement "Polisario" in Tindouf despite urgent appeals from the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human rights organizations.

Senegal also reiterated "firm and unequivocal" support to Morocco's territorial integrity and "total support" to Morocco and the United Nations' efforts to reach a negotiated political, consensual and final solution to this artificial conflict," said the communiqué in an allusion to the Sahara dispute between Morocco to the Polisario separatists that are claiming the separation of Morocco's southern provinces, known as the Sahara. The former Spanish colony was retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid Accords.

On Morocco's absence from the African Union which replaced the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU), the two sides hoped that "all obstacles hindering Morocco's return to the Union, would be soon removed."

Morocco withdrew from the then OAU in protest against its recognition of the so-called Sahrawi republic "SADR" self-proclaimed by the Polisario separatists.

The joint High Commission meeting was chaired by Moroccan Foreign Minister, Mohamed Benaissa, and his Senegalese peer Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, who met on Friday with Moroccan Prime Minister, Driss Jettou.

The commission examined means to reinforce exchanges and cooperation between Morocco and Senegal, whose economic exchanges increased by 13 percent in 2004.