Spain’s phosphate El Dorado to decide own future

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 22

Spain’s phosphate El Dorado to decide own future

(By

PETER FRANKEL.

of the Observer Foreign News Service)

EL AIUN (Spanish Sahara).

“It doesn’t matter how the referendum goes—they’ll get their independence anyway.” This was the opinion of a middle-aged Spanish businessman on the outcome of the referendum the Spanish Government is pledged to hold in the first six months of next year for the population of its remaining colony in Africa—Spanish Sahara. He i had just flown in to the colony’s capital of El Ajun to conduct a day’s business and clearly couldn’t wait to fly out of this hot and dusty desert town to his home in Las Palmas.

Spanish Sahara is slightly larger in area than the United Kingdom, but it has a total native population of only 60,000 Saharaoui. Most of these people are nomads who wander through the sandy wasteland seeking sparse grazing for their camels and goats. There is an additional population consisting of a massive garrison of Spanish troops and Foreign Legionaires, estimated to number from 12,000 to 20,000 men, plus a few thousand Spanish settlers in El Aiun and Villa Cisneros, the only places big enough to be called towns.

The colony seemed a worthless tract of desert until 1964, when American geologists, vainly searching for oil, found one of the world’s largest reserves of phosphate rock at Bu Craa. This deposit, estimated at 1,700 million tons, is being mined by an American-French-German consortium, with Spanish State participation. The phosphate is transported nearly 100 miles to the Coast on a conveyer belt system, from where this valuable raw material, which has recently quadrupled in price, is shipped. All the colony’s neigh-

ibours, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, have laid claim to it at one time or another; but King Hassan of Morocco has strongly reasserted his country’s claim in the last few weeks. The King claims that Sahara was traditionally part of Morocco before Spain took it over in 1885, a contention which is to some extent debatable. However his motivation must largely stem from the fact that Morocco happens to be the second-largest phosphate producer after the United States and clearly would like control over this vast new rival source that has been discovered so nearby to the south; “Un Nouvel Eldorado du Phosphate” as the Casablanca newspaper, “Le Matin”, put it. Spain has been under increasing pressure at the United Nations, from the Arab bloc in particular, to get out of its colony. No doubt Portugal’s moves to decolonise and the possibility of an Arab oil boycott will have helped to prompt Madrid into announcing the referendum, which will be held under United Nations supervision.

King Hassan is not at all ihappy about this, because it

■is unlikely to lead to the (possibility of a Moroccan take-over of the territory. The Saharaoui 1 questioned were unenthusiastic about coming under Moroccan rule. They tend to favour independence in their own right — although several asserted that if they had to associate with one of their neighbours, their closest affinity would be with Mauritania. The Spanish also would not wish to hand their colony over to Morocco — they nearly hope that if they have to, give it up, it will at least , remain “Spanish-ori-ented”. The Moroccans allege that several thousand Saharaoui have migrated into southern Morocco and that they are favourably inclined to Moroccan rule; but as they are in exile they will not be consulted in any referendum.

The Moroccan King, who has survived several assassination attempts, improved his standing in his own country and the Arab world by supplying crack troops to fight against Israel in the Middle East war last October. In July this year, he 1 called for total mobilisation for the recovery of “our Sahara” and it was widely reported that battle-hardened Moroccan troop.s had been moved in strength to the border area. But when I crossed the desolate southern part of Morocco by Land-Rover, I saw little sign of any exceptional military activity on the Moroccan side of the border.

Indeed, there appeared to be only two Moroccan gendarmes at the isolated bor-der-post of Tah. However, the Spanish have taken Moroccan threats seriously and El Aiun appears more like a military camp than a town. Anti-aircraft guns have been placed around the airport and supersonic American-built Northrop

IFSA jet-fighters of the Span-: ;ish Air Force regularly [ (scream low over the nomad’ | tents at the border. i Spoiling for scrap ; Many Moroccans I ques- ( tioned, particularly in the north, seemed to be spoiling ; for a scrap with Spain, but! the prospect of this happening seems most unlikely. It is probable that the rnelo-j drama generated by the. Kings’s call for mobilisation has been at lea.st in part cal-; culated to unite his divided I country against a common i enemy and to give his Army I something to do other than to plot his downfall. However, the threat of ’ war may well have helped [ to push Spain into complying with the United Nations resolutions on decolonisation. King Hassan has demanded that the issue should be settled by the i International Court of Jus-1 tice at The Hague — a move! which would effectively put! ; it on ice for several years. The other rival claimants, ! Algeria and Mauritania, have! [remained silent through ail “>this and the probability! , must be that Spain will go , ahead with the referendum' I next year, as promised. j This will follow the prece-! , dent of the former Spanish! i colony of Rio Muni in equa- . torial Africa, which became r the independent State of [ Equatorial Guinea in 1968 ■ also following a referendum. i (OFNS Copyright, 1974)