Word: mauritania
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...When Mauritania won its independence in 1960, sovereignty and sand were about all it had. Sprawled across the lower Sahara on Africa's Atlantic hump, the arid nation is twice the size of France but has only 800,000 people and an average per-capita income of less than $80 yearly. Nonetheless, since 1956 Morocco has been struggling to annex "the stolen sands of Mauritania," which it claims were illegally taken from colonial Morocco by French Army surveyors. Under the late King Mohammed V, a "Moroccan Liberation Army" even tried to "free" Mauritania; with support from Russia, Morocco managed...
Defying Morocco, Mauritania's Sorbonne-educated Premier Moktar Ould Daddah, 38, has argued all along that there is no historical basis for union, and that the two countries have neither lan guage nor ethnic origins in common. One by one, the former French colonies that backed Morocco's claims have all dropped out of the battle. Algeria's militant Ahmed Ben Bella allowed recently that Mauritania's nationhood is a "reality." Last week even neighboring Mali, which also claimed part of Mauritania and permitted pro-Moroccan guerrillas to raid the desert nation a year ago, finally...
...Mauritania...
...responsible for organizing Hassan's successful referendum, there were those who thought Hassan was a bit ungrateful. But Istiqlal leaders were pressing for close economic and diplomatic ties with Cairo, based on a common Islamic heritage, and demanding that Hassan pursue Morocco's claims to Spanish Sahara, Mauritania and part of Algeria's Sahara. Refusing to salaam to Gamal Abdel Nasser, King Hassan resisted, arguing that the nation's future lies less with the Arab world than with France and Europe's Common Market. He also opposed the nationalists' agitation on the border claims...
...MAURITANIA (F.) Pop.: 727,000. Size: 419,000 sq. mi. Literacy: 6%. School attendance: 6%. Moslems: 100%. Nomadic natives until recently had almost no schools, even had capital in Senegal...