The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, will finally meet this Tuesday with his Moroccan counterpart, Naser Burita, taking advantage of his attendance at the ministerial meeting of the International Coalition against Islamic State, as reported by his department after he himself had taken it for granted.
“I will have the opportunity to meet my colleague”pointed out at a press conference together with his new Portuguese counterpart, Joao Gomes Cravinhoafter recalling that their meeting on April 1 had to be suspended “because there was an even greater interview between the president and the king” of Morocco.
The meeting, according to Foreign Affairs, will allow both rto go over “various issues on the bilateral and international agenda, as well as the evolution of the ‘road map’ established between the two countries”. The meeting will be the first between the two despite the fact that Albares and Burita had agreed to meet in person when they had their first telephone conversation last September.
Precisely, Albares has shown “satisfied” with the pace at which Spain and Morocco are implementing the roadmap that were marked after the meeting between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and King Mohamed VI, defending that everything is advancing “without pause but not without urgency either”.
As a result of this meeting held on April 7 in Rabat, Spain and Morocco published a joint declaration in which a roadmap was established that “is being developed with total normality”, he maintained.
Thus, he recalled that the maritime and air connection between the two countries “has been fully normalized” and last week there were preparation meetings for Operation Crossing the Strait, which will resume this summer after two years of hiatus due to the pandemic, and the working group on migration matters.
According to the minister, the reinforcement of migratory cooperation “is verified on the ground with pronounced drops” mainly on the Atlantic coast, where arrivals in the Canary Islands have fallen by 45%, but also in Ceuta and Melilla and the Andalusian coasts, as well as for the resumption of migrant repatriation flights from the archipelago.
“Everything moves at its own pace”, Albares has defended, assuring that the different working groups will continue to hold meetings, but “a roadmap takes time to develop”. “We want to do things gradually, in an orderly fashion, without pause but not without urgency either,” she stressed.
“I am satisfied with the pace with which the work and coordination of these groups is being carried out,” he concluded, recalling that some of them, such as the one for the delimitation of territorial waters, have not met for 15 years.
Coalition meeting against Daesh
As regards the meeting of the Coalition against Daesh, Foreign Affairs has indicated that during it the Spanish proposal of focus efforts in Africa to defeat the terrorism, after last December a working group on this continent was created within the coalition made up of more than 80 countries and organizations.
Thus, during his speech, Albares will focus on Africa, understanding that it is the region of the world most threatened by jihadist terrorism, since both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have several subsidiaries on the continent.
In this sense, the minister will bet on strengthen coalition effortswhich has its first meeting on the African continent in Marrakech and in which the incorporation of its 85th member will take place, with the entry of Benin, a country in the Gulf of Guinea increasingly threatened by terrorism present in the Sahel.