A second round of two-day negotiations on Western Sahara got underway on Friday, with the United Nations mediator asking the participants to produce results on ending the dispute about the former Spanish colony's political future, according to dpa. Mediator Peter van Walsum, a Dutch diplomat, urged the participants to main the "good atmosphere" that prevailed in the first round of talks in June. "However, good atmosphere is not everything," van Walsum said in opening the talks held in Manhasset, a town on Long Island in New York. "The UN Security Council expects us to conduct in good faith and have productive negotiations," he said, adding that the agenda remained similar to the previous round of talks. The UN has imposed a news blackout on the talks and requested the participants to refrain from making statements to the media. Taking part in the talks were envoys from Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania. Morocco and the Polisario Front have both claimed Western Sahara since the 1970s when Spain relinquished the territory. Both the UN and the United States have urged the two sides to settle their differences through negotiations to break the impasse on the sovereignty issue in Western Sahara. The UN Security Council had called for a popular referendum to resolve the dispute, but it never took place because of deep differences between the sides. Morocco had wanted to integrate the territory, but now says it would give autonomy to Western Sahara, an encouraging development that would end the impasse. The Polisario had been calling for an independent state after fighting with Morocco.
