ABIDJAN
The Popular Front for the Liberation of the Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front) of Western Sahara announced on Tuesday that it would release 100 Moroccan prisoners of war, news agencies reported.
Polisario said the release was a "humanitarian measure" to try and solve the dispute over the future of the territory, the BBC reported. However some 1,000 Moroccan prisoners captured during the war which started when Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975 were still held by Polisario, the news agencies said.
"With this gesture, which brings to 1,000 the number of Moroccan prisoners of war set free, the Polisario Front is again demonstrating its will to find a just solution to the Morrocan-Sahrawi conflict," news agencies quoted a Polisario statement as saying.
Polisario announced the release on the same day the European Union (EU) reported that it would grant more than 14 m euros (US $13.3 m) to provide humanitarian assistance to at least 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara living in the southwestern Algerian Tindouf region.
EU Commissioner Poul Nielson said that Western Sahara "had become something of a forgotten crisis" adding that "a substantial proportion of the Sahrawi population had been living in exile in the refugee camps of southwestern Algeria [depending] largely on international assistance". With time, Nielson added, donor fatigue had set in and made the situation very precarious.
In February, the UN Security Council urged Polisario to release all prisoners of war, some of whom had spent over 26 years in detention. Morocco, the council said, had released all of its prisoners.
The council also called on Morocco and Polisario "to avoid any action that can aggravate the situation" and "to ensure freedom of movement of United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO)".
Polisario Front took up arms to fight for the independence of the region after Morocco annexed it. The two sides signed a ceasefire in 1991, paving the way for the deployment of MINURSO. However, efforts to organise a referendum on the territory's future have failed thus far.
The United Nations Security Council in April extended MINURSO's mandate until 31 July in order to allow more time to examine Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposals to break the impasse over the territory's future.
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