The last Moroccan prisoners of war -- 404 soldiers, some held for up to 20 years in desert camps -- have returned home, hours after they were freed by Western Sahara guerrillas in a US-mediated release.
Two US-military chartered planes carrying the freed POWs who had been held in southwest Algeria touched down at the airport in Morocco's southern coastal city of Agadir.
US Senator Richard Lugar, who had overseen the handover ceremony on Thursday in Tindouf, a bleak desert outpost where the guerillas are based, greeted the men at the foot of the aircraft. He had arrived in a separate aircraft. Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa and other political and military officials were also present.
The former prisoners, flown home under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), were quickly whisked away on buses. Lugar's office said the prisoners had been the longest held in the world at this time.
The men had been captured by the Polisario Front, which for years fought Morocco for the independence of the mineral-rich Western Sahara region. The US expressed hope that the release of the POWs would provide momentum for a settlement of the three-decade-long dispute.
"Although our mission is purely humanitarian, I am hopeful that Algeria and Morocco can seize on this occasion to create a climate conducive to the settlement of the Western Sahara issue," Lugar said.
Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had traveled to the region at the request of US President George W. Bush. The White House said the prisoner release was "the product of quiet and intense diplomatic efforts among the United States, Morocco and Algeria."
Morocco rejoiced at the release of the prisoners, praising the role of the US, a solid ally. However, a Foreign Ministry statement suggested the return of the POWs alone would not unblock the bitter stalemate over Western Sahara, which Morocco refers to as its "southern provinces."
The mass release was but a "belated accomplishment of an international obligation" that "in no way" can be viewed as a gesture by the Polisario or an intervention by Algeria, said the statement, quoted by the official MAP news agency.
Morocco praised the prisoners for enduring "suffering, exactions, intimidation and humiliation inflicted by their various torturers and jailers."
Mohamed Belkadi, freed in 2003 after 25 years, two months and 25 days as a Polisario prisoner, said he was "enormously happy" about the mass release.
The Moroccan former fighter pilot was captured when his F-5 jet was shot down.
"I spent 17 years without contact with my family. I got to write my first letter to my child in 1995. We were allowed two letters of 11 lines each per year. It was terrible," he said in Rabat, Morocco's capital.
The Polisario Front hoped that releasing the last of the more than 2,000 prisoners it once held would pressure Morocco to allow a long-delayed referendum on Western Sahara's future and release or account for missing civilians and Polisario POWs -- although the UN says the ICRC verified that all Polisario POWs had been released by 1996.
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