Tribe protests exclusion from Saharan identification process

A Sahrawi tribe, Rguibat Sahel Ouled Bourhim, protested in a letter to the chairman of the UN identification center in Rabat, their denial of the right to be identified as would-be voters in the projected UN referendum.

Members of this tribe said the Polisario leader at an indentification center refused to include the members of their tribe on the list of voters entitled to take part in the referendum, reports Moroccan daily "Al Alam."

They argued that the Polisario official should work in transparency and asked that the UN secretary-general's special representative for the Sahara be notified of their protest.

The identification process is a major stage in the referendum that the United Nations projects to hold in the Sahara to determine whether this former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975 will stand on its own, as claimed by the Polisario or remain a Moroccan territory.