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Spain Urges Morocco to Tackle Immigrant Issue
MADRID, Sept 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Spain offered to cooperate with Morocco to stop illegal immigrants from reaching its shores, but warned Rabat that action had to be taken on "the beaches of Morocco" where boats leave almost daily with asylum-seekers on board, news agencies reported.
"Spain is looking for nothing but the closest cooperation" with Morocco, government spokesperson Pio Cabanillas told reporters after a cabinet meeting, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Describing illegal immigration as a "common problem", the government spokesman nevertheless emphasized that Rabat must act on its territory to halt the mounting tide of Moroccan immigrants - 8,500 of whom have been arrested in Spain this year, more than twice the number of last year.
"Everyone knows where the boats are coming from and we know what is going on the beaches of Morocco," said Cabanillas.
"That's where something must be done," he asserted.
More than 13,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from North Africa, have been stopped upon arrival on the Spanish coast since the beginning of this year.
Cabanillas said that Morocco must share information with Spanish authorities in order to allow them to act against illegal immigrants.
The conciliatory tone came after Foreign Minister Joseph Pique accused Moroccan police of colluding with the mafia who control illegal immigration into Spain.
"It is obvious and no one can deny it," he said.
Morocco's junior foreign minister, Taieb Fassi-Fihri, cancelled a visit to Spain planned for Friday - citing health reasons - as the row over immigration raged on.
The Moroccan minister was due to discuss a possible meeting between the two countries' leaders with his counterpart, Miquel Nadal.
They said the cancellation notice was given late Thursday, several hours after the Spanish newspaper
El Mundo published Pique's comments.
The Moroccan minister was to discuss a possible summit designed to address the dispute.
Spain and Morocco have been at odds over drug trafficking, fishing rights and the status of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1975.
Relations have soured even further over the past few days as both sides traded charges over immigration.
Pique made his comments two days after King Mohamed VI of Morocco told the French newspaper
Le Figaro that in Spain "there are also mafias who are even richer than [those] in Morocco."
King Mohammed VI charged that Spanish mafia gangs are responsible for the increase in the number of illegal immigrants who try to enter Spain by boat from Morocco, BBC's online news service reported.
Pique, in an interview published in El Mundo newspaper, said that the collusion of Moroccan police in the clandestine smuggling of people across the strait of Gibraltar was "too clear for anyone to deny."
But he said he did not want to engage in a debate about which country was to blame for the illegal immigration.
Both Spain and Morocco are moving into increasingly undiplomatic language over the dispute.
Some of the press in Spain have recently begun to adopt a vehemently anti-Moroccan stance, the BBC said.
They quote Spanish intelligence sources as saying the Moroccan king could be allegedly creating a domestic consensus of hostility to Spain, in a preparation for a move to take over the small Spanish-controlled enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco.
But most analysts believe this to be an unlikely scenario, with King Mohammed anxious to improve ties with Europe in general.
The Spanish newspaper said Friday that Moroccan authorities had banned the distribution of 200 copies of the newspaper containing Pique's remarks, which were to be available for sale in the North African country.
Last month, Spain summoned the Moroccan charge d'affaires to tell him that Rabat had failed to do enough to stem the human tide of arrivals to Spain.
Spanish security forces said Friday that 137 illegal immigrants of North African and Sub-Saharan descent were netted in separate incidents over the past two days along the southern coast of Cadiz.
Some of the asylum seekers were spotted aboard various vessels off the coast, while another group was caught after slipping into Spanish territory.
Police also said Friday that they had freed three Moroccan illegal immigrants from a house in southeastern Spain, where they had been held for more than two weeks by several of their compatriots seeking a 1,200 euro ($1,100) ransom from their families.
Upon their arrival at the house near Alicante, their compatriots reportedly took the three hostage, instead of helping them as they had expected.
The hostages had already paid the same amount of money to secure their travel on a fishing boat from Morocco to Spain earlier this
month.
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