20091224

RABAT/TINDOUF (Reuters) - Western Sahara independence activist Aminatou Haidar said Moroccan police had surrounded her house and kept her under house arrest since her return to her desert homeland after a hunger strike in Spain.

She vowed to step up her struggle for human rights in the former Spanish territory despite what she called Moroccan repression.

Moroccan officials said Rabat was committed to respecting human rights in Western Sahara and elsewhere in the country. They declined to comment further on Haidar's case.

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

Last week, Haidar, a 43-year-old mother-of-two ended a month-long hunger strike in a Spanish airport in protest at Rabat's refusal to let her back into Western Sahara unless she declared her loyalty to the Moroccan king.

Morocco let her return home after the United States, Spain and other countries intervened.

Haidar's fasting focused international attention on Western Sahara's dispute in a way rarely seen in the 35 years since Morocco annexed the territory after Spain pulled out.

"The siege is continuing. I'm under house arrest. Family members and neighbours have problems visiting me. Shops in my neighbourhood are suffering from the siege," Haidar told Reuters by telephone from Rabat late on Wednesday.