The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Sánchez's letter to Mohamed VI: written in French and under pressure

2022-03-27T22:41:40.150Z


In a few days, Spain went from considering the Moroccan plan as one more option to qualifying it as the best possible way to resolve the Sahara conflict


The letter from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to the King of Morocco, in which he announced the shift in the Spanish position on the Sahara —considering the autonomy offered by Rabat as the "most serious, realistic and credible" option to resolve the conflict—would not have passed the minimum editing filter in a newspaper.

It was riddled with grammatical errors.

He said, for example: "Our two countries are inextricably linked by affections, history, geography [...] I am convinced that the destinies of our two peoples are also."

The letter, however, was originally written correctly.

Only in another language: in French.

What Sánchez wrote to Mohamed VI was: "Nos deux pays sont inextricably liés par des affections, une histoire, une géographie [...

] Je suis convaincu que les destins de nos deux peuples sont aussi”.

In French, as in other languages, a single verb means "to be" and "to be".

The governments of Madrid and Rabat negotiated each paragraph of the letter to exhaustion, which put an end to a diplomatic crisis that lasted 10 months and forced the Army to be mobilized to plug the hole that opened in May 2021 on the border of Ceuta and through which more than 10,000 Moroccans sneaked in.

Every period and every comma was subject to consultation, and when the French text was finally agreed upon, it was translated verbatim, for fear that any non-textual interpretation would reopen the discussion.

After Sánchez sent the letter, on March 14, it was necessary to wait four days for Mohamed VI (who, according to El Confidencial, was on vacation in Gabon) to give the definitive approval.

It was on the 18th when the head of Spanish diplomacy, José Manuel Albares, visiting Barcelona, ​​received notice from his Moroccan counterpart, Naser Burita, that the Royal House of Alaouí was going to spread the main paragraphs of the letter, a move which would be followed by two statements from the Moroccan Foreign Ministry and La Moncloa.

The Government could not be surprised that the Moroccan Royal House made Sánchez's letter public.

He had already done so with the one that, at the beginning of last January, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, sent to Mohamed VI.

A letter that, like that of the Spanish president, opened the door to the normalization of diplomatic relations with Germany, on hold for two months before that with Spain.

Both letters contained political statements on the Sahara, although not identical, and they only had real value for Rabat if they were published.

The negotiations that culminated in this epistolary pact began before, last July, the President of the Government replaced the Minister Arancha González Laya - who had promoted the reception in Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Gali, to deal with a serious condition of the covid—by Albares, but he made reconciliation with his southern neighbor his main priority.

"Morocco is a great friend," he said at his inauguration.

The new minister spoke to Burita on the phone on numerous occasions, but was never able to meet him.

Every time an appointment was set – at the UN Assembly, in September 2021, or in Barcelona, ​​two months later – the head of Moroccan diplomacy stood up.

Rabat did not accept staging the normalization of relations as long as Spain did not "clarify" its position on the Sahara.

Albares was willing to review the Spanish position on his former colony, but demanded in exchange for Rabat's renunciation of using immigration as a weapon of political pressure and the tacit recognition of Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla.

Taking advantage of the EU-African Union summit, Sánchez met with Burita on February 17 in Brussels.

Spain already agreed then to recognize "the serious and credible efforts" of Morocco to find a solution to the Saharawi conflict, paraphrasing the latest resolution of the UN Security Council, last October;

and qualify the Moroccan proposal for autonomy for the former Spanish colony, presented in 2007, as a "good basis" to reach an agreement, as Steinmeier's letter said.

But Rabat demanded more from Spain than Germany had sufficed for.

On March 2 and 3 there are two unprecedented massive jumps on the Melilla fence: 2,500 and 1,200 Sub-Saharans try to cross the border on two successive nights and almost 900 succeed.

Albares has no doubts about the purpose of this avalanche and complains to Burita.

On March 7, the

number 2

of the State Department, Wendy Sherman, visits Madrid.

The reason is to inaugurate a seminar on cybersecurity, but she meets with Albares.

He assures that he did not expose his plans on the Sahara to the senior position of the Biden Administration, but does not rule out that they spoke of Morocco.

It is more than likely that they did, for the next day Sherman flew to Rabat.

However, the joint statement that the US diplomat and Burita released on March 8 did not go further than what Germany had said and Spain was already willing to accept: that the Moroccan autonomy plan was "serious, credible and realistic" and an approach that could fulfill the aspirations of the peoples of the region.

It does not seem logical that Washington pressured Madrid to take a step that it itself was not willing to take.

The final decision was made by Sánchez and Albares and only on March 18, when the latter learned that Rabat was going to make the letter public, did he communicate it to the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, head of United We Can in the Government (who, according to his entourage, learned of the news through the Moroccan statement), and to the presidents of the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla.

Also, according to diplomatic sources, he called his Algerian counterpart, Ramtane Lamamra, but that call, if it came, did not prevent Algiers from withdrawing its ambassador in Madrid and, once the crisis with Morocco was closed, another one was opened with the second neighbor of the south.

The Government is convinced that Algeria will not break the gas contracts with Spain (40% of the total imported in 2021), due to the cost it would have for its international reputation, but diplomatic sources admit that the inevitable adjustments in this type of supply and its renewal will be more difficult to negotiate.

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-03-27

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.