Morocco calls for rethinking approach to security issues
Morocco, Politics, 11/6/2001

Morocco has called for rethinking strategies and approaches to security issues in light of the new international data consecutive to the September 11 events.

The new international data resulting from the September 11 events requires to rethink the strategies and approaches to security issues, said Moroccan minister of foreign affairs and cooperation, Mohamed Benaissa, at the opening of the Euro-Mediterranean ministerial conference held in Brussels Nov.5-6.

The move is all the more necessary for the Mediterranean region that must adopt a common and concerted strategy to face up a threat that is global and not localized, he said.

He insisted on the need to reach genuine consensus when it comes to security and development issues and the necessity for all the countries of the region to honor their commitments.

Benaissa recalled Morocco's spontaneous commitment to international efforts to fight the plague of terrorism and its active contribution to ongoing negotiations on the elaboration of a general convention on terrorism.

He also recalled that Morocco signed last month the international convention on suppression of terrorism financing that was adopted by the UN general assembly on December 9, 1999, and that at the initiative of King Mohammed VI, Morocco hosted on Oct.25-26 an extraordinary session of the Mediterranean forum. During this session, he said, the 11 foreign ministers of Arab and European Mediterranean countries pledged to join efforts to fight terrorism under all its forms.

When the sovereign received the participants in the session, he stressed the need to establish a permanent, structured and strategic dialogue between Mediterranean countries and to initiate a genuine dialogue of cultures in a bid to take into account the human dimension of Euro-Mediterranean partnership and to foster understanding between the two shores of the Mediterranean, Benaissa said.

After he deplored the shortcomings of the Euro-Mediterranean process, Benaissa recalled the Moroccan proposal to set up a security and cooperation conference in the Mediterranean, that will be a permanent, regular and global frame for dialogue and consultation and a frame to discuss issues related to peace and security in the Mediterranean.

Benaissa who deplored the development gaps between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean called for the promotion of cooperation between these shores in the frame of a dialogue between civilizations, cultures and religions, based on tolerance and the will to know and understand the other, while avoiding amalgam and prejudices.

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