Desert dispute
It will be sad indeed if the present dispute between Spain and Morocco over the Spanish Sahara leads to the kind of confrontation which King Hassan of Morocco, in his more emotional recent moments, clearly envisages. Spain has been the most politically and diplomatically successful of European countries in handling her admittedly vestigial territories in the postcolonial period, and relations with Morocco have been unusually amicable, even in the twelve years following the discovery of phosphate in the part of North Africa which remains, in effect, a Spanish colony. It is clear that little protest was made about a continued Spanish presence in this area, partly because it consists mainly of desert, partly because the population is nomadic, partly because all parties failed until recently to recognise the value of the phosphate Even now Algeria and Mauretania, the other concerned powers, have done little enough to support Morocco in her challenge to Spain. The sensible solution would seem to be a conference of the four countries — all, in comparison to others with their eyes on the deposits, vulnerable and lacking in power — designed to reach an amicable solution.
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