U.N. secretary-general resumes North Africa tour

United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, arrived in Algiers on Sunday to resume a North Africa tour that cut short recently due to a U.N.-Iraq crisis.

Annan, who was received at the airport by Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, made no statement upon arrival in the Algerian capital city.

The U.N. chief will head this Monday for the Tindouf camps, south-western Algeria, where the Polisario is headquartered. He will return to Algiers on the same day to start a two-day official visit during which he will confer with Algerian President Liamine Zeroual.

Last November 7, Annan had started a 10-day tour in the Maghreb with a visit to Mauritania and Morocco.

In Morocco, he met twice with King Hassan II and conferred with several members of the Moroccan cabinet, including Prime Minister, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, foreign minister, Abdellatif Filali, and interior minister, Driss Basri.

The tour is destined to reactivate the process to settle the Sahara issue through the holding of a self-determination referendum.

The vote will determine whether the Sahara -a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975- sets up on its own, as claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario, or be incorporated into Morocco.

After several delays, the referendum is now scheduled for December 1999.

After Algeria, the U.N. chief is due to visit Tunis on December 3 and 4 and might travel to the Tunisian-Libyan borders the following day to meet Libyan officials to try to resolve the issue of bringing to trial two Libyan suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing.