Spain offers to help W.Sahara activist return

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain has offered refugee status to a Western Saharan activist on hunger strike in the Canary Islands, to allow her to return to Morocco and end an embarrassing diplomatic incident.

Aminatou Haidar went on hunger strike this week after Morocco refused her entry and made her get back on a plane back to the Canary Islands as she tried to return to the Western Sahara, a territory which has long sought independence from Moroccan control.

She says the Moroccans took away her passport, a charge Morocco denies. The Moroccans said she had refused to recognise her Moroccan citizenship on an official form.

In a communique which followed talks by Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with Moroccan officials in Rabat, Spain's foreign ministry said it would offer Haidar refugee status papers which would serve as a passport and allow her to travel back to Morocco.

There was no immediate comment from Haidar, a prominent campaigner for the independence of the Western Sahara from Morocco. At the start of the present incident, she had boarded a plane in the Canary Islands for the Western Sahara on her way home after accepting a peace prize in New York.

Morocco took control of most of the Western Sahara in 1975 after Spain withdrew from the desert territory, and fought a low-level war against Sahrawi independence movement Polisario until the United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991.

Morocco is now offering limited autonomy for the resource-rich territory while Polisario, backed by Morocco's neighbour Algeria, is holding out for a referendum with independence as one option.

On November 6, Morocco's King Mohammed said it was time for action against traitors threatening Morocco's "territorial integrity", a clear warning to Sahrawi independence activists.