U.N. Envoy Sees No Hope of New W. Sahara Talks

Amid new tensions over Western Sahara, a U.N. envoy said Wednesday there was still no hope of convening face-to-face talks on the disputed territory between Morocco and pro-independence rebels.

Morocco, which occupies the territory, recalled its ambassador to Algiers as the U.N. Security Council held talks on Western Sahara. Algeria is a key backer of the Polisario Front independence movement.

Morocco made its protest over comments by Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika about the former Spanish colony.

At a conference in Nigeria on Monday, a speech read in Bouteflika's name by an Algerian minister made a new call for the U.N. mission in Western Sahara to have a human rights monitoring mandate.

Morocco, which started to occupy Western Sahara in 1975 as Spanish colonists pulled out, fiercely resists calls for human rights surveillance. Most other U.N. missions in the world have a rights mandate.

Morocco's foreign ministry called the Algerian comments "aggressive" and "deliberately provocative".

The frontier between Morocco and Algeria has been closed since 1994 amid relations soured by their animosity over Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich but sparsely populated territory between them.

Algeria is the key backer of the Polisario Front, which fought the Moroccan army until a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in 1991.

U.N. special envoy Dennis Ross briefed the Security Council on his stuttering efforts to bring Morocco and the Polisario Front to the negotiating table.

Ross went to Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria and Mauritania this month in a bid to break the deadlock with shuttle diplomacy talks.

"He intends to return to the region in the coming weeks to pursue this new approach," said a U.N. statement released after the Security Council talks.

"He will convene another round of face-to-face negotiations between the parties only when prospects for progress at a joint meeting of the parties improve," the statement added.