The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will participate this coming Wednesday in the meeting of the Global Coalition against Daesh, which will be held in Marrakech and in which he will coincide, therefore, with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita.
At the moment it could not be confirmed whether the two ministers will hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the meeting. “The agendas are still being finalized as to how the time he will have on the sidelines of the summit will develop,” Albares explained last Thursday during a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart, Nikos Dendias, at the Viana Palace in Madrid. Foreign Ministry sources said in the following two days that there was still no news on the matter.
Should the meeting take place, it would be the first since the normalization of bilateral relations with Morocco as a consequence of the decision of the government of Pedro Sánchez to accept the autonomy plan for Western Sahara. Last March 31, Albares and Bourita cancelled at the last minute a bilateral meeting in Rabat after King Mohamed VI invited the Spanish Prime Minister to pay an official visit to Morocco, accompanied by Albares himself, to stage the new stage in bilateral relations.
Albares accompanied Sánchez on that trip, but did not have the opportunity to talk slowly with his Moroccan counterpart, with whom he has spoken on several occasions by telephone in recent months, to try to put bilateral relations back on track. The two foreign ministers are set to play a key role in the coming months, as it will be up to them to coordinate the working groups planned to be set up in various sectors with a view to holding the postponed High-Level Meeting (HLM), initially scheduled for December 2020, before the end of the year.
More than 80 countries and international organizations will participate in the meeting of the Coalition against Daesh, which will be chaired by Bourita and, in principle, by his US counterpart, Antony Blinken (despite the fact that he tested positive for COVID-19 last Thursday). France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and representatives from the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy and other countries will also attend. Pending confirmation, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, are expected to attend. Spain has been part of the Global Coalition against Daesh since its creation in September 2014.
The meeting will focus on strengthening the global mobilization to fight the terrorist organization, which continues to pose a major threat to the international community. Following the success of the first mission in Syria and Iraq, coalition members agreed in June 2021 to shift the focus to Africa, especially in the Sahel area, where tensions have only increased and Islamic terrorists control much of the territory.
