A senior official of the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday that the joint declaration signed between Morocco and Spain on April 7, recognizes the existence of “land borders” between the two countries.
Spanish news agency EFE quoted the official, following the publication of Morocco’s letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in which the kingdom corrects that it “does not have land borders with Spain,” but rather “crossing points,” and that Melilla “remains an occupied territory.”
The joint declaration between Morocco and Spain signed in April stresses that “the full normalization of the movement of people and goods will be restored in an orderly manner, including appropriate arrangements for customs and people control at land and sea borders,” the senior official said.
In this way, the high official alludes to the land “borders” with Spain, a word that was omitted in the declaration, where it speaks only of including the customs devices “at land and maritime level.”
According to the Moroccan Foreign Ministry source quoted by EFE, the declaration resulting from the meeting between King Mohamed VI and Sanchez “contains the bases and fundamental principles of the new phase of association between the two neighboring countries.”
It lists the areas of cooperation between the two countries and “various issues of common interest, including the Sahara,” seemingly implying that the matter of borders at both land and sea levels is a mutually agreed upon norm between the partner governments.
Shortly after Morocco’s response was made public on Thursday, the Spanish Popular Party’s spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, requested President Pedro Sanchez to respond in Parliament.
“Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, period,” he said, responding to Gamarra urging him to take advantage of the parliamentary session to affirm that Rabat’s claim is false, and “not to leave without defending Spain’s territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”
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