SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 3 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The senator for the Autonomous Community, Fernando Clavijo, has requested the urgent appearance of the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to report on the High Level Meeting held between Spain and Morocco in the Moroccan capital. With this initiative, the senator of the Canary Islands Coalition (CC) wants to know the content of the agreements that both countries have signed in areas related to the Canary Islands.
“This bilateral summit has served to stage the imbalance in diplomatic relations between a country, Spain, which attended the meeting with its president and twelve ministers, and Morocco, whose king chose to continue on vacation and not receive the president of the Government of Spain”, said Fernando Clavijo.
Regarding the agenda of issues that the Government of Spain brought to the high-level meeting with Morocco, Clavijo reiterated the concern of the Canarian nationalists about the turn taken by President Sánchez in matters such as Western Sahara. “We are concerned that the Government has ratified, despite the opposition of the Cortes, its position regarding the autonomy of Western Sahara in exchange for nothing,” said the general secretary of CC, in view of the fact that “the signed agreements certify that Spain’s inexplicable turn has not been compensated by Morocco. A year later we still do not know the real reasons for Spain’s change of position”.
In relation to issues of direct incidence in the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo highlighted the negotiation between Spain and Morocco for the delimitation of maritime spaces on the Atlantic coast. In this area, the senator questioned the “obscurantism” that surrounds this negotiation. “We are concerned that in the declaration signed at the bilateral meeting in Rabat any reference to the delimitation of maritime spaces has disappeared,” Clavijo explained because the governments of Spain and Morocco “have limited themselves to congratulating each other on the progress in the meetings , but we still don’t know anything about the unilateral laws that Morocco is promoting to appropriate the sea that belongs to Western Sahara nor about the definition of the maritime borders with the Canary Islands”.
On the immigration policy addressed in the Spanish-Moroccan meeting, Clavijo also lamented the “opacity” in the nature and depth of the agreements. “It is true that both countries have reiterated their commitment to migration, but the most recent data ensures that there is a drop in the arrival of small boats to the islands that the NGOs that work on the ground, including the Red Cross, disassociate themselves from the agreement of Spain and Morocco”, recalled Fernando Clavijo when reiterating the request for appearances by Sánchez and the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares. “We want to have all the information on the agreements promoted in Rabat by different departments and the impact that these agreements could have on the islands,” he stressed, because “it is inconceivable that the PSOE would consolidate its betrayal of the Sahara and prefer to submit the defense of Canarian interests”.
For the nationalist senator, the high-level meeting between the governments of Spain and Morocco does not respond to the interests of the Canary Islands. “This meeting, in which Sánchez was looking for a photo with Mohamed VI to stage his 180-degree turn, goes down in history as the first summit in which a king plants a president of Spain,” said Fernando Clavijo. “At CC we value the recovery of the relationship with Morocco, it is our neighbor and there are many projects in common, but we believe that the dialogue must be on equal terms and with maximum transparency. And neither of these two conditions has been met in Rabat” he added.
Clavijo warned of the “dangerous drift” of the PSOE because “it cannot be said that this government has a known course” in its relationship with Morocco. “Several recent episodes worry us a lot. First, that the PSOE has chosen not to vote for a European Parliament condemnation of the persecution of free journalism in Morocco; then, just a few days ago, that the socialist MEP López Aguilar went a step further when affirming that ‘we must relate to Morocco based on mutual respect, swallowing frogs, if necessary’, and now the sit-in of Mohamed VI against Sánchez”. For all these signs, “and the humiliation in Rabat”, the senator for the Autonomous Community maintains that, “beyond the interested propaganda” of the two countries, it must be Pedro Sánchez who explains the terms of the agreement in Parliament but, Above all, Fernando Clavijo reiterated, “that it clarify the real reasons for the unilateral turn in the relationship with Morocco.”
