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Moroccan-French high level annual meeting held in Paris
Morocco-France, Politics, 5/2/2001
Moroccan Premier Abderrahmane Youssoufi arrived in Paris this Wednesday to take part in the 4th Moroccan-French high level annual meeting, co-chaired by the two countries Prime Ministers.
The meeting agenda features the institutional environment of economic activity, social development, the backing to be extended to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), education, and co-development that might take the form, as put by a French official, of the involvement of the Moroccan civil society settled in France in cooperation between the two countries.
Besides bilateral cooperation, political dialogue will cover Morocco-European Union relations, the multilateral negotiations (World Trade Organization, climatic change, defense of cultural diversity), triangular cooperation in Africa, and the situation in the middle East, in the Balkans, France and Morocco having both dispatched contingents to Bosnia and to Kosovo, and in Africa.
Prior to the annual meeting slated for Thursday, a seminar gathers this Wednesday French and Moroccan decision makers and economic operators. The seminar will ponder on the promotion of SME and will make practical proposals to increase the flow of investments by French SME in Morocco.
The Moroccan Premier is to be received later this afternoon by French President Jacques Chirac and is also scheduled to meet the first secretary of the French Socialist Party, Franois Holland.
Youssoufi and the French Premier, Lionel Jospin, will hold Thursday tte-?-tte talks before chairing over a plenary session gathering the two countries' delegations.
Youssoufi is accompanied by ministers of justice, Omar Azziman, of foreign affairs and cooperation, Mohamed Benaissa, of employment, vocational training, social development and solidarity, Abbas El Fassi, of economy, finance, Privatization and tourism, Fathallah Oualalou, of social economy, SME and handicraft, in charge of the government general affairs, Ahmed Lahlimi, and of national education, Abdallah Saaf. The delegation will hold separate work sessions with their French peers.
The principle to convene such annual meetings was decided during the state visit of the late King Hassan II to France in 1996. The 3rd meeting was held in Morocco (Fez and Marrakesh) in November 1999 and highlighted by the conversion of FF 700 million, part of Morocco's debts to France, into investments in the Kingdom.
France is Morocco's first trade partner and is the first foreign investor in the country. Morocco is France's second partner among third Mediterranean countries and ranks on top of France's public loans and other assistance recipients with a total amount of 2.5 billions.
Previous Stories:
Prince Moulay Rachid received by French President
(4/26/2001)
French former minister: internal autonomy regime to settled Sahara issue
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Moroccan-French talks over preparations of joint commission meeting
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