Fez- After His Royal Majesty’s official visit to Tunisia this past weekend, King Mohammed VI is due to visit Russia next week.
According to the Moroccan daily Al Massae, Mohammed VI’s visit is scheduled to take place on June 10 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The newspaper said that the Moroccan officials and Russian diplomats in Rabat had recently held a meeting which focused on preparation of the forthcoming Moroccan-Russian summit meeting, adding that Moscow attaches particular importance to the visit of King Mohammed VI, in the light of the dynamic role played by Morocco to consolidate stability in North Africa.
According to the same source, the Russian Ambassador to Rabat also announced the program for the King’s visit. “Putin and King Mohammed VI will address a range of issues of common interest including the Western Sahara and the latest developments in North Africa and the Sahel region,” the Russian Ambassador was quoted as saying.
The situation in the Middle East and Ukraine will also be discussed during the bilateral discussion, the newspaper reported.
The Moroccan authorities are increasingly aware that they can no longer rely solely on France or the United States to propel the United Nations towards adopting a realistic approach for a mutually acceptable solution to the Western Sahara dispute on the basis of the Moroccan autonomy plan presented to the Security Council in April 2007. So they may be looking for support from Russia, as a veto-yielding member of the Security Council, which, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, has never called for establishing a human rights monitoring mechanism in the Sahara.