Improving relations with Morocco, a priority, says Spanish future minister
Morocco-Spain, Politics, 4/6/2004

The future foreign minister of Spain Miguel Angle Moratinos said that one of the priorities of the next government will be to improve relations with its southern neighbor Morocco.

"Our priority will be to establish with Morocco a privileged relation" said Moratinos whose party, the Spanish socialist Labor Party "PSOE," won the recent general elections.

"There must be a complicity between Spain and Morocco, between France, Spain and Morocco and between France, Spain, Morocco and the Maghreb," he said in an interview published Monday by French daily "Le Figaro."

Moratinos deplored that the former Spanish Government of Jose Maria Aznar had allowed to "create a permanent crisis with Morocco," alluding to the dispute, two years ago, between the two over the tiny island of Leila (for Moroccans) and Perejil (for Spain), and over other issues including immigration.

The future foreign minister of the Prime Minister-elect Jose Louis Zapateros insisted on the need for Spain and France to initiate a common policy vis-a-vis the North African countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania) "to help our South neighbors construct their regional unity trough the Arab Maghreb Union so that they can face modernity with guarantees of success."

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