MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez
will meet Morocco's
King Mohammed VI in Rabat on Thursday after the two
countries ended a thorny year-long dispute over Western Sahara.
اضافة اعلان
Sanchez will join Morocco's king when he
breaks Thursday's
Ramadan fast with an evening meal, Spanish Foreign Minister
Jose Manuel Albares told a Madrid news conference.
"This is a very strong sign of
friendship," he said, adding Sanchez's visit would continue on Friday.
During Islam’s
holy month of Ramadan,
believers abstain from food and drink during daylight hours, breaking their
fast with the iftar evening meal.
Morocco's royal palace confirmed Sanchez's
visit in a statement, saying he would be a "distinguished guest".
The meeting comes as the two nations moved
to normalize ties after drawing a line under a bitter spat in mid-March, when
Madrid changed its position on Western Sahara, a disputed territory claimed by
Rabat.
Spain on March 18 said it had agreed to
publicly recognize Rabat's autonomy plan for the territory, ending a
decades-long stance of neutrality.
In agreeing to a long-standing
Moroccan demand, Spain sought to end a dispute which erupted in April 2021 when it
allowed Western Sahara's independence leader Brahim Ghali to be treated for
Covid-19 at a Spanish hospital.
A month later Spain allowed more than 10,000
migrants to surge across the Moroccan border into
Spain's Ceuta enclave as
local border forces looked the other way, in what was widely seen as a punitive
gesture by Rabat.
Ghali's Polisario Front has fought since the
1970s for the independence of Western Sahara, a desert region bigger than
Britain that was a Spanish colony until 1975.
Despite multiple overtures by Madrid,
Morocco remained unmoved — until last month's U-turn.
'Not too confident'
Ghali criticized Madrid's "radical
shift" and accused Spain of once again "abandoning" the people
of Western Sahara, in a weekend interview in Spain's El Mundo daily.
Western Sahara, with rich Atlantic fishing
waters and access to key markets in West Africa, is 80 percent controlled by
Morocco but considered a "non-autonomous territory" by the
UN.
Spain withdrew from the area in 1975 but the
Polisario Front waged a long-armed struggle for independence from Morocco
before reaching a ceasefire in 1991 on the promise of an UN-supervised
self-determination referendum with all options on the table.
But the referendum has never happened.
Morocco has rejected any vote including the
option of independence, and has only offered limited autonomy under a 2007 plan
which would see the phosphate-rich desert kept under Moroccan sovereignty.
In November 2020, the Polisario declared the
ceasefire null and void, and has since stepped up attacks on Moroccan forces.
Madrid, whose enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla
share land borders with Morocco, now officially views the autonomy plan as
"the most serious, realistic and credible basis" for a resolution.
Despite widespread criticism at home,
Sanchez has defended the decision as crucial for securing a "more solid
relationship" with Morocco, a key ally notably on migrant issues.
But Jorge Dezcallar, a former Spanish
ambassador to Morocco, said Madrid's shift "should" allow for better
relations with Rabat but admitted he was "not too confident" it would
be for the long term.
"It will depend on domestic politics in
Morocco," he said.
Rabat has a territorial claim over Ceuta and
Melilla which will eventually strain ties once again, he added.
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