Rabat – Morocco’s Ambassador in Moscow, Lotfi Bouchaara, met with Special Representative of the President of Russia for the Middle East and African countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in the Russian capital.
Bogdanov received Bouchaara at the ambassador’s request on Tuesday, February 17 to discuss strengthening bilateral relations and deepening political dialogue between the two countries.
Central to the meeting was a conversation on means to further strengthen relations between Morocco and Russia, according to a statement by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The two diplomats discussed deepening political dialogue and expanding trade and economic relations.
The statement also noted that an “interested exchange of views” took place regarding recent developments in the Middle East, particularly on the issue of settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Read also: Morocco Aims to Expand Centuries of Positive Relations With Russia
The discussion came less than five months after the last time the two diplomats spoke, on September 30, 2020.
Following the September meeting, the Russian foreign minister said that the two countries are seeking to relaunch and deepen political dialogue on international issues of common interest.
The wish to strengthen bilateral cooperation comes as no surprise, considering the increasingly intertwined economic ties the two countries share. While Russia became the North African country’s main coal supplier in 2020, Morocco exports its fruit and vegetables when winter comes around in the Eurasian country.
Morocco is currently Russia’s second-largest Arab trading partner and the third-largest in Africa with plenty of room to grow.
King Mohammed VI visited Moscow in 2002 and 2016, while Russian President Vladimir Putin came to Morocco in 2006.
“There has always been a special chemistry in our relations, and the relations never took on an adversarial dimension,” former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote in 2017.
