Morocco's premier holds side talks with leaders attending monterrey conference
Morocco, Politics, 3/23/2002

Moroccan Premier, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, who represented King Mohammed VI at the UN Conference on development financing convened in Monterrey, Mexico, March 18-22, held side talks with several heads of state and chiefs of international organizations attending the conference.

Youssoufi thus held separate meetings with President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, and President of Costa Rica, Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria. Talks covered ways of enhancing Morocco's relations with these two countries and issues on the agenda of the UN conference. Youssoufi briefed his interlocutors on latest developments of the Palestinian issue, laying focus on recent initiatives to restore peace and security in the Middle East region.

The Moroccan Premier also expounded the latest developments of the Sahara issue, voicing Morocco's firm resolve to defend its territorial integrity and its willingness to seek a fair political and peaceful solution to this issue. Youssoufi had earlier met the President of Columbia, Andres Pastrana, to whom he conveyed a message from king Mohammed VI. He also surveyed at a meeting with Director General of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Hoerst Koehler, the progress scored by Moroccan economy at the macro-economic level and the reforms initiated by Morocco in various sectors. The two sides equally spoke of the Maghreb region and of Maghreban countries' relations with the IMF. Youssoufi renewed Morocco's determination to push forward the Maghreban project. He renewed the invitation extended by King Mohammed VI to the IMF chief to pay a visit to Morocco.

In his message to the Monterrey Conference, King Mohammed VI has called the international community to mobilize energies to double the volume of public assistance to development and consequently half the poverty rate by year 2015 and to seek lasting solutions to developing countries' foreign indebtedness, whose reimbursement exceeds by far the totality of some countries' revenues, and to make efforts so that international trade liberalization, as governed and ruled by the World Trade Organization and materialized in various regional spaces, be fair and non-discriminating.

Previous Stories:
  Morocco confirms Algeria's covetousness in Sahara   (3/22/2002)
  Sahara issue not the only divergence between Morocco and Spain, official   (3/22/2002)
  Amazigh is the property of all Moroccans, king   (3/22/2002)

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