Participants at a conference Monday in Geneva, as part of the 16th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), stressed that autonomy is a form of self-determination and offers a suitable solution to the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara.

The Moroccan delegation expressed its "extreme disappointment" with polisario's refusal to discuss the issue of human rights as part of UN-brokered informal talks on the Sahara, Morocco's Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri said on Wednesday in Malta.

A delegation from the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS), is participating in the 16th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which is currently taking place in Geneva.

The Moroccan delegation arrived, on Monday at Mellieha, a town north-western Malta Island, to take part in the 6th set of informal talks on the Sahara, held under the aegis of Christopher Ross, UNSG's Personal Envoy for the Sahara.

Morocco presented several concrete ideas to accelerate the pace of the UN-backed negotiations on the Sahara and has reaffirmed its willingness to find a political solution to the regional dispute on the basis of the autonomy plan, Foreign Minister Taib Fassi Fihri underlined on Sunday at the end of the fifth round of UN-backed informal talks, held on January 21-23 in Manhasset (New York).