/ 10 March 2000

UN DISCUSSES WESTERN SAHARA

THE UN Security Council will hold closed-door consultations on Friday on the situation in Western Sahara, where several hundred people recently held demonstrations. The United Nations has been trying for more than eight years to organise a referendum to decide whether the former Spanish colony should be incorporated into Morocco, which controls most of the territory, or become independent, as called for by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.