Council members voted unanimously Friday to keep supporting the UN-negotiated truce in 1991 that called for a referendum on the region's future.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had advised the council he sees no prospect of resolving the decades-long dispute between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front over the region's future anytime soon.

He also expressed concern about Polisario claims that Morocco is violating the rights of Sahwaris.

Spanish colonizers left the territory in 1975, but a year later went to war over it. Morocco took over when Mauritania pulled out, then proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the mineral-rich region.