Zapatero tours disputed cities

MELILLA, Spain

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero got a hero’s welcome this week as he toured this disputed Spanish enclave in North Africa and pledged Madrid’s support — actions that drew rebuke from Morocco, which also claims the city.

Melilla was the site of a humanitarian crisis last year when waves of destitute Africans tried to cross into Europe from Morocco. Melilla and Ceuta, a city further west on the Mediterranean coast, have been in Spanish hands since 1580 and 1496, respectively, despite being in North Africa and surrounded by Morocco. Both are separated from Morocco by fences fortified with razor wire.

The enclaves are a gateway into Europe for sub-Saharan Africans trying to escape poverty.

The visit by Mr. Zapatero was the first to this city by a sitting Spanish prime minister in more than 25 years.

Nabil Benabdellah, a Moroccan government spokesman, called the visit “inappropriate” but said, “Ties between Madrid and Rabat are excellent, and this visit should not hurt the good quality of relations.”

Newspapers in Morocco called the visit provocative.

Supporters yelled “Thank you” and “You are brave” to Mr. Zapatero as he came to the town hall for talks with the city’s leader, Juan Jose Imbroda.

On the Moroccan side, about 50 Moroccans protested the visit, trying in vain to block traffic at a busy border crossing with Melilla.

The rally was called by the nationalist Moroccan Liberal Party, which considers Melilla and Ceuta to be occupied cities.

Mr. Zapatero visited the migrant holding camp, ground zero of the humanitarian crisis last year, and expressed his government’s firm support for Melilla as a Spanish city.

“I reiterate the government’s commitment to the people of Melilla,” he said, announcing plans for a new hospital, two new schools and other government spending in the crowded city of 70,000. “The government is very conscious of the singularity of Melilla, which needs special attention,” he added.

Morocco wants Melilla and Ceuta back, but Mr. Zapatero has stressed that the status of the two cities “is not and will never be up for discussion.”

The visit “is badly perceived in Morocco,” wrote Le Matin du Sahara, a semiofficial newspaper.

“The fact that a Spanish head of government makes … an official visit to the fortified posts that are the object of a territorial disagreement with a neighboring ally country is in itself a source of major concern,” editorialized L’Opinion, the paper of the Istiqlal party’s nationalist conservatives.

African migrants cheered and yelled traditional greetings to Mr. Zapatero as he toured the holding camp. Some applauded as he walked amid rows of barracks-style housing units and stopped to chat with residents. Some snapped photos of him with their cell phones.

Others shouted “Papers, papers” — a demand for residency permits.

Hundreds of African refugees stormed the border of Melilla in September and October, and 11 died in clashes with security forces. Mr. Zapatero also visited Ceuta during the two-day trip.

His trip is the first by a Spanish prime minister in office since Adolfo Suarez’s 1980 visit. Spanish King Juan Carlos has never visited the cities.

Mr. Zapatero’s predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, visited the cities in 2000 as a candidate running for re-election, not in his capacity as acting prime minister.

Mr. Aznar went again in February 2004, but at the time he was a caretaker prime minister campaigning for his hand-picked successor in elections the following month.

According to Agence France-Presse, Mr. Zapatero stressed on Tuesday the importance of respecting migrants’ human rights during his visit.

In Melilla, Mr. Zapatero underlined his “commitment to maintain and reinforce all security measures and social initiatives [so] that we may be a country which is a reference point for the greatest social effort and engagement for human rights.”

In Morocco, Mr. Benabdellah said, “Rabat claims both as Moroccan, and as the positions are known, we can only deplore this visit.”

Spanish television quoted government sources as saying that Madrid would not comment on Rabat’s reaction and that bilateral relations were “excellent.”

For Morocco, the enclaves are an anachronism from the time when northern Morocco was a Spanish protectorate between 1912 and 1956.

Spanish government sources said Mr. Zapatero was to announce funding equivalent to $5 million for two reception centers, one in each enclave, for Moroccan minors.

Repeated attempts between July and November by thousands of Africans to make it over the fencing separating the riches of the European Union from their impoverished continent led to some of the worst violence at the border crossings and prompted EU states to earmark the equivalent of nearly $1 billion in aid through 2013.

The international community voiced outrage late last year when humanitarian organizations discovered that hundreds of migrants escorted by Moroccan authorities had been cast into the Moroccan desert in a convoy of buses without food or water. They eventually were flown back to their countries.

The border fencing, meanwhile, has been raised from 10 to 20 feet.