Morocco: According to the Moroccan royal palace’s statement on Tuesday, King Mohammed VI would meet with Spanish Prime Minister ‘Pedro Sanchez’ on Thursday in Rabat, as both countries are on the way to patching up their diplomatic dispute that flared in 2021.
Spain is Morocco’s leading trading partner. Both counties worked together on various projects so that they could resolve the issues like migration, militancy and energy.
Their bilateral ties improved between them after Spain declared in March that it supported the Morocco autonomy plan as the most severe, realistic and credible basis for settling the dispute over Western Sahara.
The language reflected a shift in Spanish policy in favour of Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that Morocco claims but where the Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish its own state.
In 2021 April, Morocco was in anger after Spain admitted Polisario leader Brahim Ghali for his medical treatment, saying it had not been informed.
Morocco warned that if Ghali left Spain, where he faced human rights charges, it could cut diplomatic ties without a trial.
Rabat then seemed in order to relax border restrictions with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco, leading to an influx of nearly 8000 migrants, from which most of them later came back.
The support of Spain came after the autonomy plans came in positions by the United States, Germany, France, Israel, and other countries of Africa as well as the Arab world.
Rabat expresses its 2007 independence initiative is the most it can do as a political solution to the conflict.
The Polisario Front and its ally Algeria oppose this and insist on an independence referendum.
The United Nations has stopped directing attention to the referendum option, instead urging conflict parties to negotiate in a spirit of compromise toward a “mutually acceptable solution.”
