The Diplomat
The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, began yesterday a three-day official visit to Morocco in the course of which, according to the State Department, he plans to express the support of his government to the autonomy plan for Western Sahara, considering it “serious, credible and realistic”.
Blinken arrived yesterday in Rabat as part of a tour of the Middle East and North Africa which will conclude tomorrow in Algeria. The visit of the Secretary of State comes two days before the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to launch the “new stage” in relations with Morocco.
Prior to his arrival in Morocco (where he will meet with Prime Minister Aziz Akhanouch and Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, as well as Moroccan civil society leaders and media), the State Department outlined “commitments to security and prosperity” that will mark Blinken’s visit, including a specific section devoted to Western Sahara. “The United States continues to view Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as serious, credible, and realistic, and one potential approach to meet the aspirations of the people of Western Sahara,” the Department’s spokesperson’s office said.
The terms used by the State Department are almost exactly the same as those used by the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, in his controversial letter to King Mohammed VI, made public by the Moroccan Royal House on March 18, in which the head of the Executive stated that “Spain considers that the Moroccan proposal for autonomy presented in 2007” is “the most serious, credible and realistic basis for the resolution of this dispute”.
All Spanish parliamentary groups of all stripes (with the exception of the PSOE) have rejected both the substance and the forms of this radical turn in Spanish foreign policy. In addition, Algeria (the main supplier of gas to Spain, a particularly important fact in the context of the current war between Russia and Ukraine) has expressed its indignation at this measure and has recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations.
In the background of this change of course in Spanish policy is the decision of the previous US president, Donald Trump, to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the territory, which served as a trigger for the serious diplomatic crisis experienced by Rabat and Madrid since the spring of 2021, aggravated by the allegedly irregular entry into Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali. Morocco has insisted that the real cause of the crisis was due to the fact that Spain had not adopted a position of open support for Rabat’s pretensions in the Sahara, as the United States had done.
Polisario statement
Precisely, Brahim Ghali chaired this weekend a meeting of the National Secretariat of the Polisario Front, at the end of which the Saharawi independence formation expressed “its condemnation of the decision taken by the President of the Spanish Government, announcing his clear support for the alleged Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara and thus siding with the illegal military invasion by Morocco of the territory of the Saharawi Republic”.
“This position represents a shameful act of abandonment and denial in the management policy followed by the Spanish state with regard to Western Sahara which, incapable of fulfilling its historical, political, legal and moral responsibility towards the Saharawi people, pretends to divest itself of its status of administering power of a territory pending decolonization by taking this unilateral decision”, the text continues. However, the Polisario Front praises “the unanimity of the Spanish people, its political forces, trade unions and the whole of civil society in its rejection of the decision of the Spanish government, demonstrating in support of the inalienable right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence,” the statement concludes.
