Rabat:Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Rabat on Thursday to reset his country’s “strategic partnership” with Morocco despite criticism from within his own left-wing government about caving in to Moroccan pressure.
At the talks, both sides agreed to show mutual respect, particularly in regards to matters of sovereignty.
“We are going to avoid anything that may offend the other, especially with regard to our respective spheres of sovereignty,” Sanchez said after he and a dozen ministers met Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch.
It was the first such high-level meeting since 2015.
“Today we are consolidating a new stage in relations between Morocco and Spain,” Sanchez said, insisting that there was “enormous unexplored potential” between the two nations.
“Moroccan-Spanish relations have never reached this level of cooperation and coordination,” added Akhannouch.
The visit comes less than a year after the Spanish leader drew a line under a year-long diplomatic crisis by reversing decades of neutrality on the Western Sahara conflict to back Morocco’s position.
But the concession to Morocco has drawn harsh criticism from across the Spanish political spectrum.
Sanchez’s number 3 in government, Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz — a member of the hard-left Podemos — declined to join the visit in line with her party’s rejection of Sanchez’s U-turn on the Western Sahara.
The right wing has also denounced Sanchez, with Esteban Gonzalez Pons of the opposition Popular Party saying there was “no greater humiliation than bowing to the will of Morocco”.
But Sanchez has defended the move as essential for Spanish interests, calling Thursday for new investments in Morocco, where his country is already the third-biggest foreign investor.