Morocco, best democratic experiment in mideast, US ambassador
Morocco-USA, Politics, 11/27/2000

Morocco is the best democratic experiment in the Middle-East, US ambassador to Morocco, Edward Gabriel, said. "We in the U.S. State Department believe that Morocco probably is the best democratic experiment that is currently going on in the Middle East," Gabriel told the State Department, adding "Morocco's number one strength is its civil society."

He said the US is looking to support Morocco's effort to strengthen civil society in terms of delivery of services and, more importantly, helping the government become more accountable.

The diplomat also lauded King Mohammed VI's "very strong" advocacy of decentralization, "which is another key to democracy -- going to the lowest level of government for decision-making so that the people are empowered through the electoral process."

He further underlined "Morocco has a strong justice minister committed to change." "We've seen the issues of transparency, anti-corruption addressed very quickly. The court system has improved and this has a lot to do with our technical assistance there."

Touching on the US-Maghreb Conference, held Nov. 15-16 in Washington, Gabriel termed the event as "a concrete example of the many projects that are now part of the U.S.-North Africa economic partnership, commonly referred to as the Eizenstat initiative."

This was the culmination of over a year of work on bringing together real projects with real U.S. investors, he said, adding that out of 40 projects for presentation put by the three north African countries, at least half are from Morocco. The US diplomat went on that projects deal energy, infrastructure, tourism, manufacturing, and information technology areas.

The value of projects amounts to several billion dollars.

Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have a very strong desire to diversify their investment portfolio to the United States. It's a super opportunity right now for U.S. companies, he said, calling on US investors to draw benefit from the growing transparency in the North African economies.

In a transparent bidding process, U.S. companies have won contracts for projects worth three or four billion dollars. One is the Jorf Lasfar energy project with CMS Energy -- a $1.5 billion project. CMS Energy was chosen over a French bidder, he said.

"North Africa is making a decision, Morocco in particular, to go transparent," he said, recalling Morocco's GSM phone license was a model of transparency. The bid, which earned Morocco $1.1 billion is a real example of transparency," he said, adding transparency creates real technical and economic competition.

"We think the United States has a super advantage in telecommunications, energy, infrastructure and even tourism development."

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