MADRID: After decades of warfare, diplomatic wrangling and refugees languishing in desert camps, could a solution finally be at hand to the Western Sahara conflict?

The Spanish presidency of the United Nations Security Council will table a draft resolution on one of the United Nations’ longest- running conflicts by the end of the month, a diplomatic source confirmed in Madrid.

The resolution will contain a reference to a new proposal by UN special envoy James Baker, which many observers regard as the best chance so far to break the deadlock between the occupying power Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement.

“This will be a significant step,” the Spanish diplomat enthuses. Not everyone is as optimistic.

Morocco and its ally France will prevent the resolution from even being submitted to a vote, and “the Security Council will do nothing but prolong the mandate of UN peacekeepers in Western Sahara,” predicts Brahim Ghali, the Polisario delegate to Spain.

Forgotten by the world, the Western Sahara conflict has dragged on since 1975, when Spain abruptly pulled out from what was then known as Spanish Sahara. Morocco annexed two-thirds and Mauritania the rest of the desert territory of 264,000 square kilometres.

Launching attacks with Algerian support, Polisario drove Mauritania out in 1980, but Morocco annexed its share.

The drawn-out and costly war, during which Morocco built a 2,500- kilometre defensive wall in the desert, ended in a UN-sponsored ceasefire in 1991.

A planned referendum on independence has been postponed countless times over squabbles about who is allowed to vote.

The UN identified some 90,000 “real Saharawis”, but Morocco wanted to pack the voter rolls with tens of thousands of settlers who could tip the result in its favour.—dpa