Spanish and Moroccan foreign ministers underscore importance of regular contacts

Spanish and Moroccan foreign ministers, Josep Pique and Mohamed Benaissa, underlined on Tuesday how important it is to maintain permanent contact to consolidate cooperation between the two countries.

In a meeting held between Benaissa and the Spanish official who is paying an official visit to Morocco -his first official visit abroad since his appointment last April 1st- rallied the Moroccan foreign minister's proposals to update the 1980 cultural convention and to blow new life into the "Averroes Committee" set up in 1996 to promote understanding, entente and rapprochement between Moroccan and Spanish civil societies.

The two officials also agreed that cultural cooperation needs to be reinvigorated and to create, for this purpose, a "Moroccan-Spanish Friendship Center."

The head of the Spanish diplomacy also supported the Moroccan suggestion to create a "Bertichi Prize" named after Spanish painter, Mariano Bertichi, who founded in 1947 a fine arts school in northern Morocco.