Rabat – France’s Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade Franck Riester will carry out a two-day visit to Morocco as part of the two countries’ commitment to boosting cooperation, French sources have reported.
Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported today that France and Morocco are seeking to establish exchanges and official visits following the diplomatic crisis they experienced in the past few years.
The goal of Riester’s visit, the report added, is to “renew the economic partnership” between the two countries.
Riester will be accompanied by a French delegation composed mainly of the President and Director General of Business of the French International Chamber of Commerce.
News of the French delegation’s visit comes amid converging reports suggesting that France is also seeking to invest in Morocco’s southern provinces.
If confirmed, France will be taking a bold step in support of Morocco’s Western Sahara, after many Moroccan observers took issue with what they described as Paris’s ambiguous and sometimes subtly hostile position on Morocco’s stance on the Sahara dossier.
Over the past months, Paris and Rabat have given constant signals of their desire to in a political dialogue to mend their damaged but essential bilateral relations.
For years, many in Morocco maintained that France’s ambiguity on the Western Sahara question was the main factor in Rabat’s assertiveness in reconsidering the terms of its formerly strategic cooperation with Paris.
While visiting Rabat in February, the French Foreign Minister signaled his government’s readiness to change this perception as he described Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the most serious and credible path to lasting resolution of the Western Sahara dispute.
The French ambassador to Morocco, Christophe Lecourtier, echoed the same sentiment last month, noting that France was “among the first [countries] to say that it [the Moroccan Autonomy Plan] was a good solution.”
“Perhaps we did not give enough signals, and we should have expressed our positions more openly,” Lecourtier said.
