OAU views on Sahara issue would have been ideal had OAU maintained neutrality

Morocco said the backing that the Organization of African Unity expressed for efforts made by the United Nations to settle the Sahara issue would have been ideal, had the OAU maintained neutrality in the issue.

The spokesman of the Moroccan Foreign Affairs Department, who was reacting to statements by OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim on the issue, expressed surprise that "such statements were made by an official who pertinently knows that the OAU excluded itself from the settlement process when it admitted the phantom SADR among its members."

The admission of the SADR (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic), self-proclaimed by the Polisario, led OAU founding member Morocco to quit the OAU during the 1984 Nairobi summit.

By this decision, "The OAU anticipated on the outcome of the referendum...," the spokesman said

The spokesman also denied the existence of a joint UN-OAU plan to settle the Sahara, as Salim Ahmed Salim put it. "Morocco does not know anything about such a plan. There is only one plan, presented by the UN and fully backed by Morocco."

The UN is trying to settle the Sahara issue through the holding of a self-determination referendum that will determine whether the former Spanish colony --retrieved by Morocco under the 1975 tripartite accords concluded with Spain and Mauritania-- sets up on its own or remains incorporated into Morocco.

The referendum, slated for next December, still stumbles over differences between Morocco and the Polisario over the voters' lists.