Posted on 07/18/2002 7:51:37 AM PDT by Dog Gone
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Hours after recapturing a tiny, disputed Mediterranean island from Morocco, Spain offered Thursday to withdraw its troops if Morocco promised not to reoccupy the largely uninhabited rock.
Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said Spain has ``no desire'' to stay in on the outpost known in Spanish as Isla Perejil -- Parsley Island -- and in Arabic as Leila, or Night.
``It desires to return to the status quo ... but for that it requires a serious status quo, with guarantees,'' Palacio said in remarks broadcast by Spanish radio Thursday morning.
``That is to say, if we leave, the Moroccans don't enter and we return to the situation we had before,'' she added.
Elite Spanish soldiers swooped into the Mediterranean island aboard helicopters Wednesday and dislodged Moroccan soldiers who had been guarding an observation post established a week earlier. Neither side fired a shot.
The Spanish soldiers quickly detained the troops in the surprise assault, supplanting the Moroccan flag with their own. Morocco said the operation was tantamount to ``an act of war'' and demanded that Spain withdraw.
Tensions have escalated in the week since Morocco established the outpost on the island, which both countries maintain they need in order to combat illegal immigrant traffic and the smuggling of drugs and other contraband.
Palacio said outside mediation was not required to end the dispute.
She said Spain would be satisfied with a commitment from Moroccan King Mohammed VI and a general Moroccan political will to bring an end to the crisis.
Once a withdrawal was agreed on, Palacio said, Spanish and Moroccan police forces could carry out joint operations against drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
Relations between the two countries, which face each other across the Strait of Gibraltar, have soured since Morocco recalled its ambassador to Madrid last fall.
The countries have bickered over illegal immigration and fishing rights, as well as Madrid's insistence that a U.N.-sponsored referendum should be held on the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in the 1970s.
Madrid-based political analyst Charles Powell said the response of the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was comparable to Margaret Thatcher's attitude toward Argentina's 1982 attempt to take the Falkland Islands by force, which led to a British-Argentine war. However, the island in the Mediterranean is essentially unoccupied -- unlike the Falklands.
Although Powell said it was inconceivable that Spain and Morocco would go to war, he said Aznar was sending a message: ``You don't treat a major European power like this and think you can get away with it.''
Spain says it has controlled the island since 1668, even though it abandoned a permanent presence four decades ago.
Morocco also claims title to the island and said it set up the ``observation post'' to combat smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants.
But Spain ordered the Moroccans off.
``Spain had been attacked by the force in a sensitive point of its geography,'' Defense Minister Federico Trillo told an emergency session of Spain's parliamentary foreign and defense committees early Wednesday.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States had urged a peaceful settlement and Secretary of State Colin Powell had been in touch with the foreign ministers of both countries during the standoff.
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