RABAT (AFP) — Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero arrived in Morocco Friday for talks that were dominated by economic issues and this weekend's planned launch of the new Union for the Mediterranean (UPM).
"The UPM, which has been welcomed from the outset by Madrid and Rabat, and the process of economic integration of the Maghreb, were discussed at length during Zapatero's brief working visit," a Moroccan official told AFP.
Spanish investment in Morocco and the vexed question of illegal immigration into Spain through Morocco also featured strongly in the talks in the eastern city of Oujda, the official said.
The official Moroccan news agency hailed Zapatero's visit, the first to Morocco since his re-election in March, as underlining the strong relationship on all levels between the two countries. Spain is Morocco's second biggest European trading partner after France.
Relations between the two countries took a turn for the worse following the December 2007 visit by Spain's King Juan Carlos to Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves in northern Morocco. Rabat considers them to be "occupied" while Madrid refuses any discussion on the subject.
Zapatero, who was accompanied on the trip by Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, also met King Mohammed VI following his talks with Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi.
Leaders from some 40 countries will meet in Paris on Sunday to launch the Union for the Mediterranean, a flagship project of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Building on the European Union's 13-year-old Barcelona process, the Union for the Mediterranean will bring together the 27 countries of the EU with states in north Africa and the Middle East, creating a forum with a combined population of 765 million people.
Spain, which had shepherded the Barcelona process between the EU and the Mediterranean region since 1995, had felt slighted after Sarkozy began touting the project as his own during his 2007 presidential campaign.
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