Polisario Front Reportedly Severing Сontacts With Spanish Government

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Western Sahara) says it is halting contacts with the Spanish government, the Sahara Press Service has reported.

On Thursday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI and signed a joint declaration on the normalization of relations. In March, Sanchez called Morocco’s 2007 proposal to offer Western Sahara autonomy under its sovereignty the "most serious, realistic and credible" way of ending the conflict.

Polisario said in a statement published by the Sahara Press Service that the front was halting contacts with the Spanish government over Sanchez’s support for the idea of Western Sahara’s limited autonomy, which is viewed by Polisario as an attempt to "annex" Western Sahara.

The Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Western Sahara) has fought with Morocco since the 1970s, over the control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was later transferred to the control of Morocco and Mauritania.

A UN-brokered ceasefire deal was reached in 1991 and the UN Security Council voted in favor of holding a referendum to define the status of the territory, but Moroccan authorities have since opposed any vote that includes independence as an option, supporting the idea of limited autonomy only.