Spain supported pro-Moroccan solution in Sahara, say Wikileaks

The Spanish Government from the start backed a proposal to turn Sahara into an autonomous community within Morocco, according to leaked telegrams sent between Embassies in the States, Madrid, Rabat and Paris, uncovered by Wikileaks and published in Spanish newspaper El Pais on Tuesday.

In 2006, the then Foreign Affairs Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, sent a proposal - on un-headed paper, according to the paper - suggesting that talks cease to be about independence and sovereignty (for the Sahrawis) and instead about backing "regionalization, autonomy and self-government".

"A similar solution to the one offered by Spain to Catalonia," proposed Moratinos, while Spanish civil servants agreed that independence was not a realistic option.

When in 2007 Morocco presented its document proposing autonomy for Sahara, according to the leaked communications Moratinos was unsatisfied with the result and asked for more generosity on the part of the Moroccans. The same telegrams revealed that Spanish Diplomacy considered that the situation was made more difficult by the French pro-Moroccan stance.

"Jacques Chicac - the French President at that time - is more pro-Moroccan than the King of Morocco," the then Vice Foreign Minister Bernardino León is quoted as saying.