Tiempo: Aznar's external strategy partly relies on strengthening relations with morocco

The Spanish weekly "Tiempo" wrote this week that Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar needs to consolidate Spain's position inside the European Union and strengthen relations with Morocco in the two coming weeks to consolidate his heritage of external policy.

Aznar should defend Spain's "weight" inside an enlarged Europe during the intergovernmental conference that will adopt the final version of the European constitution (December 12) and should benefit from the Moroccan-Spanish high level meeting (December 8-9) for a final normalization of bilateral relations, the paper said.

"Hence, the two coming weeks are decisive to define the bases of the external policy which Aznar's successor will inherit" after the elections set for next March, Tiempo explained.

Aznar will make on December 8-9 a "trip that is probably the most important during the four last years of his mandate," underlined the Spanish weekly.

The Spanish and Moroccan Prime Ministers will have to raise the question of the Sahara which is the main reason that caused lukewarm relations between the two countries, Tiempo insisted, pointing out that Spanish minister of foreign affairs Ana Maria Palacio has opted since her appointment for a "rapprochement" with Algeria and the involvement of Europe in the problem of immigration.

The newspaper recalled in this vein that the first Algerian-Spanish high level meeting was held this November 26-27 in Algiers, only ten days before the Moroccan-Spanish high level meeting.

The paper insisted nonetheless that "relations between Rabat and Madrid are on the right path" which is evidenced by the Moroccan king's announcement early this month of the creation of a Directory of Migration and Borders Surveillance and a Migration Observatory as well as the creation on November 18 of a joint cooperation commission in charge of fighting immigration flow.