Morocco has launched an arms buildup in a worrying move that could hurt U.N.-backed talks on the Western Sahara, Algeria's APS news agency quoted the territory's independence movement as saying.
Polisario Front President Mohamed Abdelaziz added that people in the disputed territory were concerned about Morocco's "aggressive impulse" because they did not want a return to conflict, the official agency reported late on Saturday.
"It's an arms race is a significant worry for the Saharawi people, at a time when Moroccan-Saharan conflict lies in the hands of the United Nations," APS quoted him as saying. "The intention to do harm is the basis of current policies Morocco receipt of all weapons and the redeployment of troops in the territory of Western Sahara," he said.
A fourth round of U.N.-brokered talks between Morocco and Polisario to settle the status of the phosphate-rich desert territory of 260,000 will start on March 16 near New York.
Peacekeepers have watched over Western Sahara since 1991 when the United Nations brokered a ceasefire to end a guerrilla war between Polisario and Morocco, which annexed the northwest African territory in 1975.
Morocco poured money and people in this area, bounded on the west by the Atlantic, and to the east in the sand defensive wall protected tens of thousands of troops and reinforced by mines. No country formally recognizes that the rule of Morocco over Western Sahara and the UN Security Council is more than a solution.
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