<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares met this Tuesday in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's High-Level Week, with his Moroccan and Algerian counterparts, Nasser Bourita, and Ahmad Attaf.</strong></h4> "Meeting with my Moroccan counterpart, my friend Nasser Bourita, at the 80th UN General Assembly," Albares wrote on social media. "We discussed our excellent bilateral relations, which are at their best in history. Our ties of cooperation and friendship are strengthening and advancing in all sectors," he added. "At the 80th UN General Assembly, I met with my Algerian counterpart, my friend Ahmed Attaf," he wrote in another message. "We discussed our good bilateral relations, including the 190% increase in exports. Determined to strengthen our friendship and cooperation," he concluded. In April 2022, the decision of Pedro Sánchez's government to support Morocco's proposed autonomy plan for Western Sahara allowed it to overcome a very serious diplomatic crisis with Rabat, but at the cost of seriously deteriorating relations with Algeria, Spain's main gas supplier, at a particularly delicate time due to the energy crisis stemming from Russia's war in Ukraine. The thaw in bilateral relations came in 2023, following Sánchez's remarks before the UN General Assembly in which he advocated seeking a solution to the Sahara conflict "within the framework of the United Nations Charter and Security Council resolutions," without mentioning the Moroccan autonomy proposal, and thanks to Spain's pro-Palestinian stance. The first meeting between Albares and Attaf since the diplomatic crisis took place last February on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in South Africa. Separately, Tuesday's meeting was Albares' third with Bourita this year and the twelfth since taking office in July 2021. At the previous meeting, which took place in Madrid in April 2025, the Foreign Minister reiterated Spain's support for the autonomy plan proposed by King Mohammed VI in 2007, which represents "the most serious, realistic, and credible solution" to the Sahrawi conflict.
