In the shadowless reaches of the Spanish Sahara, some 40 miles from the Atlantic Coast, the dusty oasis of Bu-Craa swelters in the middle of a moonscape of endless dunes and burned-out scrub. It is an ancient cross roads for camel caravans and fierce des ert nomads in their swirling burnooses. For years, Spanish Foreign Legionnaires in their whitewashed forts knew Bu-Craa as a lonely corner of the end of the world.
It will be lonely no longer. Last week the Spanish government announced that at Bu-Craa, in partnership with the International Minerals & Chemical Corp. of Skokie, Ill., it...