The Diplomat
The Spanish-Moroccan Joint Commission met yesterday at the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, in Madrid, to coordinate the preparation of the Operation Crossing the Strait 2023 (OPE-23, for its acronym in Spanish).
During the meeting the details of the Special Plan of Civil Protection for the OPE-23 were specified, which will be closed in the next weeks and in which all the necessary aspects for the development of the device will be gathered, according to the Ministry of the Interior in a press release.
On the Spanish side participated the undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Isabel Goicoechea; the general director of Civil Protection and Emergencies, Leonardo Marcos; the general director of Coordination and Studies of the Secretariat of State for Security, José Antonio Rodríguez; and the general director of Traffic, Pere Navarro. Also in attendance were officials from the Directorate General for the Maghreb, the Mediterranean and the Middle East of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and representatives of other ministerial departments.
On the Moroccan side, the Moroccan Ambassador to Spain, Karima Benyaich, the Director of Migration and Border Surveillance of Morocco, Khalid Zerouali, and senior officials of the Directorate General of National Security and the Royal Gendarmerie and representatives of different Ministries participated.
According to the Ministry, the operational arrangements that both countries will put in place to ensure the development of the OPE-23 will be similar to those established last year. In the OPE of 2022, the first one after two years of pandemic and in full recovery of the bilateral diplomatic relations, the Ministry of the Interior established a security device of 15,995 agents of National Police and Civil Guard that facilitated the transit through Spain of more than three million Maghrebis.
