SAHRAWI WOMEN CLAP AT A FESTIVAL MARKING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SELF-PROCLAIMED SAHRAWI ARAB...

SAHRAWI WOMEN CLAP AT A FESTIVAL MARKING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SELF-PROCLAIMED SAHRAWI ARAB DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Sahrawi women clap during a dance festival marking the 25th anniversary of the Polisario Front's independence movement for control of Western Sahara from Morocco, in El Ayoun refugee camp in southwestern Algeria on February 28, 2001. Fifteen years of guerrilla war from 1976 to 1991 followed by a decade of international efforts to organise a referendum have yet to settle the dispute over to whom the territory belongs. Failure to hold the referendum after a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in 1991 has fuelled talks of a "third way", a form of self-rule which the Algerian-based Polisario rejects as a Western plan that favours Morocco.