The planned Inga 3 scheme, which aims to overcome power
shortages that have curtailed economic growth in Africa, would
produce some 4,800 megawatts (MW) of electricity and is one of
the largest proposed power projects in Africa.

It would be sited about 230 km southwest of the Democratic
Republic of Congo’s (DRC) capital Kinshasa.

Yet the project has been dogged by problems since the 1980s,
ranging from political instability including a recent civil war
to local objections and, not least, the massive costs.

Speaking after three days of meetings in Paris that brought
together the World Bank, African Development Bank, technical,
financial advisers and potential developers, Congo’s Electricity
Minister said there was a commitment to the project because of
rising demand for electricity in the region.

“We need to do Inga 3 because if we don’t we’ll be putting
our country up for mortgage,” Bruno Kapandji Kalala said.

Congo holds rich deposits of copper, tin, cobalt and gold.

Inga 3 project is the first of seven phases of a proposed
$80 billion hydropower complex that would produce 40,000 MW of
electricity, becoming the world’s largest power plant, almost
double the size of China’s Three Gorges.

The development was given a boost in March after South
Africa agreed to buy 2,500 MW of the electricity from Inga 3,
securing the commercial viability of the scheme. The two nations
also agreed a treaty to move ahead with the larger project.

Officials said that by 2020/21 – when the project is due to
be completed – there would be a power shortage of some 5,000 MW
in DRC. South Africa is expecting an electricity shortfall of
40,000 MW by 2030. Mines and smelters were hit by severe power
shortages in the continent’s largest economy in 2008.

FEASIBILITY STUDIES

Kalala, whose advisers include French utilities firm EDF
, said feasibility studies were finished. The project
will be carried out as a public-private partnership with three
consortiums preparing financial and technical bids.

A decision is due in early 2014 with the objective of
beginning construction towards the end of 2015.

Three consortiums are in the running, including one led by
China Three Gorges Corp and Sinohydro ; a
Korean/Canadian group comprising Posco, Daewoo Corp and
SNC-Lavalin ; and a Spanish group led by ACS.

Existing hydro plants Inga I, commissioned in 1972, and Inga
II which followed a decade later, have fallen into disrepair and
only produce about a quarter of their joint capacity of 1,700
MW.

Despite a vast network of rivers, Congo exploits only a
fraction of its hydroelectric potential and the government
expects power shortages to worsen in coming years.

Less than 10 percent of Congo’s 70 million people have
access to power and mining companies are scaling back production
and expansion because of shortages.

The last attempt to get Inga 3 off the ground with a
consortium called Westcorp fell apart because of concerns over
the business climate in Congo.

“Our government will do everything to ensure transparency.
There is no possibility of corruption as we are being helped by
the African Development Bank and World Bank,” Kalala told
Reuters.

The success of Chad’s 2,000 battle-hardened troops in a French-led mission to hunt down al Qaeda fighters in the deserts of northern Mali has marked it out as the only African nation to quickly deploy an effective fighting force.

In March, Chadian peacekeepers then played a decisive role in allowing rebels to seize power in Central African Republic, cementing 60-year-old Deby, who seized power in a 1990 coup, as a regional kingmaker.

Some trouble now appears to have arrived closer to home: last week Deby headed off what Chadian officials described as a coup plot. Two senior generals were arrested and four people were killed, although the details remain murky, with opponents calling it a government move to crush dissent.

Whatever the circumstances of last week’s incident, expressions of alarm from Paris showed Deby’s importance to the former colonial power as France seeks to row back from its role as “Africa’s policeman”.

“France wants stability in Chad,” said a senior French diplomat. “Chad is an important partner for France in Africa. It is participating in the fight against terrorism in Mali and plays a stabilizing role in the region.”

Chad’s military success has handed Deby status among his West African counterparts, who thanked him at a February summit for his decisive intervention in Mali. He seems set to win Chad’s first seat on the U.N. Security Council in 2014.

It is a remarkable turnaround for Deby, a taciturn French-trained ex-fighter pilot who only survived a rebel attack on his presidential palace in 2008 thanks to support from Paris.

Long one of the poorest countries in the world, Chad has started earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year since ExxonMobil began pumping oil in 2003.

That has allowed Deby to rearm and slowly position himself as a central African strongman, filling a gap left by traditional regional powers.

To the north, the 2011 civil war in neighboring Libya removed an influential if mercurial player, Muammar Gaddafi, while flooding the Sahara with weapons. In a bid to fill Gaddafi’s shoes, Deby revived the overthrown Libyan leader’s Community of Sahel Saharan African Countries in January.

To the West, Nigeria, West Africa’s richest and most populous country, has pulled back from the region as its sparsely-equipped military has been stretched combating the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency at home, which has killed thousands since it flared again in 2009.

Nigeria sent 1,200 troops to Mali, but unlike the Chadians they played no part in frontline battles against the Islamists. The Nigerians form the core of an African force playing a policing role well behind the French and Chadian offensive.

Chad, by contrast, burnished its reputation in March by announcing the death of the elusive and feared al Qaeda commander, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid. Its claim to have killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, mastermind of January’s mass hostage-taking at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, has not been confirmed.

“Who would have thought six months ago that we would be paying so much attention to Chad?” said John Campbell, senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria. “Chad has found space because of Nigeria’s withdrawal.”

CHAD THE KING MAKER

In Central African Republic, Chad’s decisive role in the change of government exposed South Africa’s pretension of acting as a continental superpower. Pretoria had sent a contingent of some 400 troops to prop up President Francois Bozize.

Deby, who had helped Bozize seize power in a 2003 coup, had tired of Bozize’s refusal to share power with the opposition which was stirring up a revolt along Chad’s southern border.

The final straw came when Bozize disbanded his Chadian bodyguard and turned to South Africa for military aid. Deby ordered Chad’s peacekeepers to step aside and Seleka rebel forces stormed the capital, as France made good on its promise not to intervene militarily.

South Africa’s involvement ended with 13 of its soldiers killed, showing Pretoria lacked the regional knowledge and military resources to play a decisive role in Deby’s backyard.

“Deby wanted more recognition for what he had done for Bozize,” said one close aide to the ousted president. “But Bozize turned to others for help and Deby did not like that.”

Chad appears set to play a key role in the transition. Two summits in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, attended by a stony-faced South African President Jacob Zuma, confirmed rebel leader Michel Djotodia as CAR’s transitional president.

Djotodia, who spoke with Deby before the coup, is backed by rebel generals with close ties to Chad: his head of military operations is a former member of Deby’s presidential guard.

“That the French did not help Bozize contributed to his downfall, but the kingmaker was clearly Chad,” said Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at Britain’s Chatham House international affairs think tank.

NO FRENCH PROXY

In Paris, Deby is regarded as a useful ally as a cash-strapped France reassesses its priorities. Paris is shifting attention towards Asia and ending the post-colonial system of ‘francafrique’ under which it intervened more than 40 times to prop up African leaders who backed its business interests.

President Francois Hollande sent French troops to Mali saying al Qaeda-linked rebels could use a northern enclave to threaten global security. But he has vowed to promote democracy in Africa and end French meddling in purely domestic politics.

Deby remains an unpredictable ally. With tax from 120,000 barrels a day of oil production supplying state coffers and investment interest from China, he does not need France for cash. Economic growth hit 7 percent last year, though Chad still ranks near the bottom on indexes of economic development.

Vines said Chad cooperated with France in Mali because their goals were aligned but Deby is no “proxy” for French interests: “In Central African Republic, I can’t imagine France would want the Seleka rebels in power … It’s highly destabilizing.”

Since seizing power in a 1990 coup, Deby has won a series of elections disputed by international observers and faces allegations of graft and rights abuses. He has weathered at least seven rebellions, mostly from the lawless east.

Officials in Paris insist that were Deby to be in trouble again, France would not get involved this time. But they acknowledged that Deby’s usefulness is forcing Hollande’s government to turn a blind eye to his domestic dealings.

“When Deby came to Paris before Mali, we raised the difficult internal questions, but now we have to find the right balance,” said one French diplomatic source.

THREAT FROM WITHIN

The circumstances of what Chadian officials described last week as a bid to “destabilize the Republic” in N’Djamena remain unclear, with opponents accusing Deby of preemptively crushing dissent.

With many of his best fighting troops 1,500 miles away, Deby is more exposed that he has been for years. Timan Erdimi, Deby’s nephew, vowed last month to revive the UFR rebel movement in eastern Chad, which almost toppled Deby in 2008.

Opposition leaders have publicly questioned the wisdom of lavishing money on the mission in Mali – estimated at some 100 million euros – given shortages at home.

Despite its oil, landlocked Chad has been rocked by humanitarian crises over the last decade including conflicts in the east and south, drought in the arid Sahel, and flooding. Two journalists who have criticized the government have been jailed in recent weeks.

Opposition leaders say many in the military are demoralized by the failure to pay bonuses and the loss of some 36 soldiers – the heaviest of any foreign army – battling Islamists in Mali.

“If we tried to destabilize him, we would be categorized as trouble makers, Islamists even,” said opposition leader Acheikh ibn Oumar, exiled in Paris. “An attempt to destabilize him is more likely to come from within his own circles in the capital.”

(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg and Ange Aboa in Bangui; Editing by Peter Graff)

Mohamed Bazoum, in Paris to meet his French counterpart Laurent Fabius, said Niger had information that Islamists who had been driven out of northern Mali by a French-led intervention force were setting up bases in Libya’s lawless south.

“We always thought there were two areas that needed to be dealt with: Mali and Libya,” Bazoum told Reuters in an interview.

“Mali has been settled, but Libya is far from being resolved, and today we think Libya is one of the biggest international terrorism bases.”

The Libyan government, already struggling to impose security two years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, has said it is worried about an influx of the al Qaeda-linked fighters who had seized control of Mali’s northern two-thirds last year.

Several Islamist and separatist rebel groups have already taken advantage of the chaos in Mali, and the ‘Arab Spring’ overthrow of Gaddafi and other autocrats, to build up their arsenals and move freely back and forth over the unsecured borders of North and West Africa.

MALI FORCE

Niger, which adjoins Libya to the south and has also fought Islamists at home, contributed troops to a U.N.-mandated African force in Mali. It also hosts French and U.S. military personnel on its soil.

“Southern Libya is not under the control of the state and we have information that suggests that a certain number of jihadists are now in this area,” Bazoum said.

The Malian crisis was itself in part triggered by an influx of tribal fighters armed by Gaddafi after France, Britain, the United States and others helped rebels to overthrow him.

Bazoum said the major powers that had played a role in ousting Gaddafi and as a consequence destabilising the region had to ensure that stability and democracy prevailed in Libya.

“It’s Libya as a whole and the south especially,” he said. “I don’t feel there is a great effort by the international community to stabilise Libya.”

Another of Libya’s neighbours, Chadian President Idriss Deby, last week accused it of letting mercenaries intent on destabilising Chad set up a training camp – an accusation Libyan authorities denied.

France, Britain, Turkey and other countries are providing technical support and equipment to help Libya secure its borders, and the European Union is sending a mission in June to train Libyan border personnel.

France convened delegations in February in Paris from the United States, Britain, Arab nations, the United Nations and European Union to discuss ways to stabilise Libya, though nothing tangible appeared to have been decided.

“As long as the Libyan state is a state that is unable to control its borders, there is a risk,” Bazoum said. “These bases, because they are terrorists’, they will be a threat for Libya’s immediate neighbours.”

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Yahoo, which declined to comment, had been in talks to acquire a 75 percent stake in Dailymotion, owned by France Telecom’s Orange (FTE.PA: Quote, Profile, Research), a deal that would have valued Europe’s largest video website at $300 million.

The failure of the talks makes for another public knock to France’s business image after verbal attacks last year by Arnaud Montebourg on firms seeking to shut ailing industrial sites prompted international derision.

“I met the Yahoo and Orange chief executives in my office. Yahoo wants to devour Dailymotion, but we told them no and that it had to be a 50:50 split,” Montebourg told Europe 1 radio.

France owns a 27 percent stake in France Telecom. French government officials had raised concerns that the country would lose control over one of its biggest Internet industry successes if the deal went ahead, sources familiar with the matter said.

Montebourg, one of the government’s most outspoken ministers, is charged with restoring competitiveness to the industrial sector and promoting the “Made in France” brand.

He said that he had wanted Yahoo to follow a model similar to Renault (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nissan (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research), whereby the identities of both firms were retained while they developed their products across the world.

“It’s in the interest of France and Dailymotion, which is a golden nugget that needs to be preserved,” he said.

President Francois Hollande, whose approval rating has fallen as low as 25 percent, is scrambling to beef up state coffers and kick-start investment and spending as his growth, deficit and job creation goals fall apart.

Montebourg said in an earlier statement he was committed to attracting foreign investment especially from American firms – the biggest investors in France, but that the “investments had to contribute to the recovery of the country.”

A deal with Dailymotion and a non-European partner would have had little impact on employment in France since Dailymotion operates with only about 165 employees.

A spokesman for Orange, part of France Telecom, said discussions were ongoing with several potential investors as Dailymotion needed to find a partner outside Europe to accelerate its development.

Dailymotion is the 12th biggest video-sharing website in the world, according to web tracking firm comScore, trailing Google Inc’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) YouTube, but with a leading position in Europe.

It gets roughly 120 million unique users per month, more than any other French web company. Last year it broke even and generated 40 million euros in sales. France Telecom has been searching for a partner to boost the site’s development outside Europe, especially in the United States.

Dailymotion, founded in 2005 by two young entrepreneurs has received roughly $68 million in venture capital backing and was bought by France Telecom in 2011.

Online video, which commands higher ad rates than traditional Web content, is increasingly important to Yahoo as it seeks to reverse declines in revenue and visitor traffic.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who took the reins of the struggling Internet pioneer in July, has so far focused her acquisition efforts on small, mobile start-up companies.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Orescovic in San Francisco; Editing by Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens)

“The minister expressed his desire that a partnership between Yahoo and Orange (France Telecom) be built on an equal basis that would be beneficial to both sides,” Arnaud Montebourg’s office said in a statement.

The minister also said he regretted Yahoo Inc’s decision to abandon plans to buy the stake.

Yahoo had been in talks to buy a 75 percent stake in Dailymotion, owned by France Telecom, in a deal that would have valued Europe’s largest video website at $300 million.

Yahoo declined to comment.

France owns a 27 percent stake in France Telecom and French government officials had raised concerns that the country would lose control over one of its biggest Internet industry successes if the deal went ahead, two people familiar with the matter said.

A deal with Dailymotion and a non-European partner would have had little impact on employment in France since Dailymotion operates with only about 165 employees.

Montebourg, one of France’s Socialist government’s most outspoken ministers, said he remained committed to attracting foreign investment especially from American firms, which are the biggest investors in the country, but that the investments had to contribute to the recovery of the country.

A spokesman for Orange, part of France Telecom, said discussions were ongoing with several potential investors as Dailymotion needed to find a partner outside Europe to accelerate its development.

He said this could be in the United States or Asia, for example, where Dailymotion needed to expand to ensure its future development. “It is not about finding a new source of funding.”

Dailymotion is the 12th biggest video-sharing website in the world, according to web tracking firm comScore, trailing Google Inc’s YouTube, but with a leading position in Europe.

It gets roughly 120 million unique users per month, more than any other French web company. Last year it broke even and generated 40 million euros in sales. France Telecom has been searching for a partner to boost the site’s development outside Europe, especially the United States.

French government officials and France Telecom executives had sought a compromise in which Yahoo would take a 50 percent stake instead, but Yahoo balked, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Dailymotion, founded in 2005 by two young entrepreneurs has received roughly $68 million in venture capital backing and was bought by France Telecom in 2011.

Online video, which commands higher ad rates than traditional Web content, is increasingly important to Yahoo as it seeks to reverse declines in revenue and visitor traffic.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who took the reins of the struggling Internet pioneer in July, has so far focused her acquisition efforts on small, mobile start-up companies.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Orescovic in San Francisco; Editing by Jane Merriman)

The freeze will still lead to the loss of 34,000 jobs in the
defence ministry at a time of growing unemployment in France,
according to a strategic review announced on Monday.

The decision also means the Socialist government will need
to look elsewhere to raise funds as it tries to reduce state
spending by 60 billion euros over its five-year term and meet
deficit targets.

“France wants to maintain its ability to react alone. This
recent period has proved that there is a definite lack in the
army in terms of equipment,” President Francois Hollande said.

Hollande had come under pressure from his own left-wing
lawmakers and armed forces officials who feared that any cuts
ordered by the finance ministry would harm France’s military
capabilty.

The military won plaudits for its intervention in Mali in
January which drove back Islamist rebels. But the operation
showed its limitations in mid-air refuelling, troop
transportation and intelligence gathering.

The review, which outlines defence priorities from 2014 to
2019, comes at a sensitive time for France, a permanent member
of the U.N. Security Council and a nuclear power.

The document seeks to overhaul the armed forces to create a
more mobile army and to boost intelligence resources and special
forces. It also makes cyber security a priority.

Hollande ordered the review to take recent revolutions in
the Arab world into account as well as changes to France’s
historical ties in Africa, and a shift in the United States’
focus away from Europe towards Asia.

The defence ministry has borne the brunt of cuts in recent
years, seeing its annual budget decline from about 2.5 percent
of economic output since the end of the Cold War.

The White Paper set an overall budget for the period of
179.2 billion euros ($233.4 billion). It kept 2014 spending at
31.4 billion euros, equivalent to 1.5 percent of GDP.

It also factored in job cuts from the 228,000 personnel now.

“In total, from 2014 to 2019, the defence ministry will have
to reduce its staff by about 34,000 people,” the document said.

INDUSTRY PROTECTED

Paris will push for a more integrated European Union defence
programme, the review said, and will co-operate with Britain on
a new anti-ship missile.

France’s own defence industry had been braced for spending
cuts that many feared would cause job losses and slash
investment in research and development.

Contractors including Thales and Safran
wrote to Hollande in March warning him of the risk of cutting
back on defence spending when the number of people out of work
is rising.

A list of priorities spares the chief procurement programmes
from being axed.

France will renew its ageing fleet of Boeing refuelling
tankers with a programe to buy converted Airbus A330
passenger jets from 2014. Its targeted refuelling fleet of 12
aircraft is lower than previous estimates of 14 planes.

The White Paper also backs the Airbus A400M military
airlifter, a seven-nation project plagued by cost overruns and
delays. France aims to have a fleet of 50 tactical airlifters.

Mahamadou Djeri Maiga, the group’s vice-president and chief negotiator, said Paris had a moral obligation to force the interim Malian government to the negotiating table to flesh out a deal that would create a framework for autonomy in the north and provide international guarantees.

“Have you ever seen a group disarm before negotiations take place?” Maiga told Reuters.

The restless Tuaregs have launched successive revolts since Mali gained independence from France in 1960, alleging neglect and mistreatment by the black-led central government in Bamako.

Despite French pressure, there are no signs in Bamako of talks starting between the government and the MNLA separatists, made up primarily of Tuaregs. Malian officials have said they want to restore their control over the northern region.

An announced visit to the Tuareg stronghold of Kidal by Mali’s Prime Minister Diango Cissoko was this month postponed indefinitely.

“Holding elections just when the Malian army is threatening to enter Kidal is not realistic,” said Maiga. “It’s a war that is imminent not elections. If France allows the Malian army to attack us in Kidal, then we will defend ourselves to the death.”

The MNLA had seized control of north Mali, which it calls Azawad, in an April 2012 uprising. It was quickly pushed aside by better-armed Islamist rebels, including al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM, sparking fears the region would become a launch pad for attacks on the West.

A three-month French-led campaign intervention broke Islamist dominance of northern Mali, sweeping their forces into desert and mountain hideaways, but Paris has now started to withdraw troops as it looks to hand over to U.N. peacekeeping forces by July.

French President Francois Hollande has demanded the presidential and legislative elections go ahead as planned. French diplomatic sources say the MNLA must now disarm and become a political party.

“France knows our position. We will not accept disarming without a consensus between us and the Malian government. We have to be shown what we will get tomorrow and who will guarantee it,” Maiga said in Paris where he was meeting parliamentarians.

“France is running Mali,” he said. “It must put pressure on Bamako.”

Analysts have warned that a botched election could sow the seeds of further unrest and north-south conflict in the landlocked former French colony.

Hundreds of thousands of Malians have been displaced by the fighting and the north remains vulnerable to guerrilla-style counter attacks, despite the presence of thousands of African troops under the AFISMA banner. This is expected to become the backbone for a proposed 11,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Highlighting the tensions, a senior government official in Bamako, said he had little faith in the MNLA.

“If they don’t disarm by the elections then we’ll have to go in and sort them out.”

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Western Sahara, a tract of desert the size of Britain that has lucrative phosphate reserves and potentially offshore oil, is the focus of Africa’s longest-running territorial dispute, between Morocco and pro-independence Polisario guerrillas.

A U.S.-drafted resolution that proposed installing United Nations peacekeepers to monitor human rights abuses had angered Morocco, and taken its traditional protector France by surprise.

“There will be a resolution very soon for a new mandate of the MINURSO,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot told reporters, referring to the mission’s acronym. “We are close to a solution that will satisfy everybody.”

Lalliot declined to comment on the details of the resolution, which was due to be voted on April 25.

But three Western diplomats said Washington had withdrawn the demand after its resolution was reviewed by a group of countries including the United States, France, Spain, Britain and Russia.

“The Moroccans will be satisfied,” said one diplomat.

A U.N. Security Council diplomat said that the draft resolution contained more human rights language than previous years, describing it as a “step forward.”

It encourages enhanced efforts and progress on human rights but does not propose that U.N. peacekeepers monitor them, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The United States’ U.N. mission had no immediate comment.

CONFLICT DATES TO 1970s

The dispute dates back to 1975 and pits Morocco, which asserts that the region to its south is part of its territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front movement.

Morocco holds about 80 percent of the territory and the Polisario the rest, including refugee camps.

Europe and the United States say their worry is that the conflict is souring relations between Morocco and Algeria and preventing them from working together against Islamist violence.

While allegations of abuse have lessened since a 1975-1991 war, rights groups like Amnesty International accuse Morocco of continuing to use excessive force against demonstrators and activists and repressing political freedom, among other abuses.

Morocco and France, its former colonial ruler, have resisted the idea of peacekeepers reporting on rights abuses in Western Sahara, and Paris has long supported Rabat’s position due to historical and business relations.

The United Nations brokered a ceasefire settlement in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario with the understanding that a referendum would be held on the region’s fate.

But the referendum never took place and attempts to reach a lasting deal have foundered.

A Moroccan official, who confirmed the latest U.N. draft would “encourage human rights”, said he expected Algeria and Polisario allies to lobby for changes in the next two days.

A senior Polisario official told Reuters the group was struggling to prevent its youth from taking up arms after seeing years of failed talks and ongoing rights abuses.

“This (compromise) is a big mistake that shows to the Sahrawis that their pacifism isn’t leading to anything. It’s a shame,” said Paris-based Omar Mansour, a member of the Polisario’s National Secretariat decision-making body.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the conflict in Mali, where France deployed troops and air power to oust Islamist rebels, threatens to spill into Western Sahara.

(Additional reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Rabat and Mohammed Abbas in London; editing by Mark Heinrich)

The dispute over Western Sahara dates back to 1975 and pits Morocco, which claims the region is part of its territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario.

The United Nations brokered a ceasefire settlement in 1991 with the understanding that a referendum would be held on the region’s fate. But the referendum never took place and attempts to reach a lasting deal have foundered.

Now, a group of countries including the United States, France, Spain, Britain and Russia is reviewing a U.S. draft resolution that would extend the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers on the ground by a year, with a human rights monitoring mission.

Polisario accuses Morocco of routine human rights violations in Western Sahara and has called for the MINURSO peacekeepers to have the authority to conduct human rights monitoring.

While allegations of abuse have lessened since a 1975-1991 war, rights groups like Amnesty International accuse Morocco of continuing to use excessive force against demonstrators and activists and repressing political freedom, among other abuses.

“If the U.N. does not take this seriously to ensure self-determination and that human rights are respected, then we are heading towards a war with regional implications,” Omar Mansour, a member of the Polisario’s National Secretariat decision-making body told Reuters.

A vote on the resolution is due by the end of April.

A Britain-sized tract of desert that has lucrative phosphate reserves and potentially offshore oil, Western Sahara is the scene of Africa’s longest-running territorial dispute.

Europe and the United States say their worry is that the conflict is souring relations between Morocco and Algeria and preventing them from working together against Islamist violence.

Rights groups have long pushed for adding human-rights monitoring to the tasks of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, but Morocco is opposed.

Morocco and France, its former colonial ruler, have resisted the idea of peacekeepers reporting on rights abuses in Western Sahara, with Paris a longtime supporter of Rabat due to historical ties and business relations.

However, diplomats have said that France is unlikely to use its veto power to block the U.S. draft resolution.

Instead, talks are under way to modify the proposal after Morocco – a temporary Security Council member – reacted angrily to the text, dispatching diplomats to all countries involved in an effort to soften or derail it.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the conflict in Mali, where France deployed troops and air power to oust Islamist rebels, threatens to spill into Western Sahara.

Such fears may be tempering French support of Morocco.

President Francois Hollande, whose Socialist Party has closer ties to the Polisario than the previous government, said in Morocco this month that the situation in the Sahel meant there was “greater urgency” to solving the Western Sahara problem.

Mansour said he doubted Islamist militants would infiltrate Western Sahara, but there was a risk of young Western Saharans taking up arms to fight against Morocco.

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Michael Roddy)

The dispute, dating back to 1975, pits Morocco, which says the Western Sahara is its territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which says it is an independent state.

Morocco and France, its former colonial master, have resisted the idea that the peacekeepers should report on rights abuses in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated tract of desert that has phosphates, fisheries and, potentially, oil and gas.

The U.S. draft resolution to the Security Council, designed to extend the mandate of the U.N. mission in Western Sahara for another year, was circulated this week to the so-called Group of Friends on Western Sahara, which includes the United States, France, Spain, Britain and Russia.

“It (modifying the text) is one of the possible options and the object of discussions taking place,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot told reporters. “We are not at the stage today to say whether we will vote for or against it.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the conflict in Mali, where France deployed troops and air power to oust Islamist rebels, threatens to spill into Western Sahara, with the possibility of infiltration by foreign militants.

Paris may have decided to soften its position given the crisis in Mali. Indeed, President Francois Hollande, in a trip to Morocco at the start of the month, said the situation in the Sahel region meant that there was “greater urgency” to resolve the Western Sahara problem.

“CREDIBLE SOLUTION”

Paris, Morocco’s traditional protector on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, has previously vetoed resolutions on the issue, supporting Rabat unconditionally.

But diplomats said on Thursday that it was unlikely this time to use its veto to block the U.S. draft.

Lalliot said Paris’ general position was unchanged.

“We believe that the status quo is in the interest of nobody and we have supported for a long-time a fair, lasting and mutually agreeable solution. We have always said we support the Moroccan autonomy plan, which is as a serious and credible solution,” Lalliot said.

He said that given the reaction of Morocco, a temporary Security Council member, those who had put forward the text would need to evaluate how it could be modified to see how Rabat could approve it.

The U.S. resolution prompted Rabat to cancel planned joint U.S.-Moroccan military exercises in response. It has dispatched diplomats to all the countries negotiating the text in the hope of derailing or softening the resolution, officials said.

“This is endangering the whole region and the negotiation process,” Moroccan government spokesman Mustapha Khalfi said.

The idea of making U.N. human rights monitoring one of the tasks of the U.N. peacekeeping mission for Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, is something Morocco opposes but rights groups and the Polisario have long advocated.

A vote on the resolution is due by the end of April.

The United Nations brokered a settlement in 1991 with the understanding that a referendum would be held on the fate of the region. The referendum never took place and attempts to reach a lasting deal since then have foundered.

(Additional reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Rabat; Editing by Alison Williams)