RABAT, 08 April 2022, (TON): Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is set to meet Moroccan King Mohammed VI during a two-day visit to Rabat that seeks to mark an easing of diplomatic tensions centred on Morocco’s disputed region of Western Sahara.

Spain’s government has called Thursday’s meeting an opportunity to open a new stage in ties with Morocco based on mutual respect, but also to discuss “restraint from any unilateral action to honour the importance of all that we share and to avoid future crises”.

Relations between the two countries separated by the Strait of Gibraltar were severely frayed last April.

Morocco was angered by Spain allowing the leader of the pro-independence movement for Western Sahara to receive medical treatment for pandemic at a Spanish hospital on request by Morocco’s neighbour Algeria, an ally of pro-independence Sahrawis.

Morocco responded by loosening its border controls around Spain’s North Africa enclave of Ceuta, provoking the unauthorised crossing of thousands of young Moroccans and migrants from other African countries.

The mood did not improve until last month, when Sanchez took the surprising decision to alter Spain’s longstanding position on Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony.