The Australian mining company BHP Billiton could find itself in the middle of the conflict between the Sahrawi people and the Moroccan government due to its bid for the Canadian fertilizer firm Potash Corporation.

The Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW), an activist group that maintains close ties with the Sahrawis, will be urging BHP's management and shareholders early today to reconsider their possible involvement in the political row. The Sahrawi people have lived in refugee camps in the Algerian desert since the Moroccan occupation in 1975. They have been fighting for independence of the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

The Sahrawis have endured human rights violations including a denial of their rights to phosphate mining. The United Nations advised the indigenous people and the Moroccan government to negotiate directly and unconditionally on a mutually acceptable political solution.

Close ties between Potash and Morocco's national phosphates company, Office Cherifien Des Phosphates (OCP), have angered the Sahrawis. The fertilizer giant has been accused of supporting an illegal regime. OCP, the world's biggest exporter of phosphates and derivatives, supplies Potash Corporation with about 500,000 tons of phosphates. The state phosphate company produces and sells the entire Moroccan phosphorite resources which amount to 85,000 million tons.