20091215

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday he would ask the U.N. mediator on Western Sahara to try to hasten a new round of talks as part of a bid to save the life of a Sahara hunger striker in Spain.

Aminatou Haidar, a Sahara independence activist, has been fasting at Lanzarote airport in Spain's Canary Islands for nearly a month, since Moroccan authorities put her back on a plane when she returned home after a trip to New York.

Ban plunged into the dispute last week, holding telephone talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos on Thursday and meeting Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri in New York on Friday.

Haidar is seeking to return to Western Sahara, but Morocco refuses to let her back unless she swears loyalty to its head of state, King Mohammed, whose father took control of most of the territory in 1975 after Spanish colonial forces withdrew.

The hunger strike by Haidar, 43, has strained relations between Spain and Morocco. The future of the phosphate-rich territory is the subject of deadlocked U.N.-led negotiations between Morocco and Sahara's Polisario independence group.

At a regular news conference, Ban linked the two issues, saying that tackling the Haidar crisis "really requires that the United Nations needs to do more on this political negotiation."

He said he would discuss with his Sahara envoy, former U.S. diplomat Christopher Ross, how "to expedite this political process."