Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, held a meeting yesterday with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, to “advance” the roadmap for the new bilateral relations and prepare the next High Level Meeting (RAN, for its acronym in Spanish), which has not been held since 2015 and is scheduled for early 2023.
According to Foreign Ministry sources informed The Diplomat, the hour-long meeting took place at the Spanish Embassy in Paris on the occasion of the minister’s transfer to the French capital to attend the fifth edition of the Paris Peace Forum and meet with the director general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay.
During the meeting, according to the same sources, Albares and Bourita discussed the development of the roadmap agreed last April 7 in Rabat by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and King Mohammed VI, in the framework of the recovery of bilateral relations, and the next RAN, which had initially been scheduled for November but will finally be held in early 2023, as announced by the Moroccan minister himself last October.
The two ministers also discussed the EU-Morocco agenda on the occasion of the upcoming Spanish Presidency of the Council of the Union, in the second half of 2023, and on the meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), which will take place in Barcelona on November 24 and which will deepen the Euro-Mediterranean and Euro-Arab agendas. “Good meeting with Nasser Bourita to advance the development of the roadmap and the High Level Meeting,” Albares stated through his Twitter account.
The new bilateral meeting is part of the current process of improving diplomatic relations, which suffered a very serious deterioration in 2021 due to the reception in Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, on humanitarian grounds, and were relaunched earlier this year following the decision of the Government of Pedro Sánchez to accept the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
The last RAN between Spain and Morocco was held in 2015 and the next one had been scheduled, in principle, in December 2020, but has suffered several postponements because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the deep bilateral crisis. Finally, the letter sent by Sanchez to Mohamed VI in which he affirmed that the autonomy plan for Western Sahara constitutes “the most serious and realistic basis” laid the groundwork for the recovery of diplomatic relations and paved the way for the holding of the High Level Meeting, mentioned in the Joint Declaration of April 7.
