French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna yesterday said it was up to Morocco whether to seek French aid in dealing with its deadliest earthquake in more than six decades and said France was ready to help if asked.
Paris and Rabat have had a difficult relationship in recent years, notably over the issue of Western Sahara, which Morocco wants France to recognize as Moroccan. Morocco has not had an envoy in Paris since January.
“This is a misplaced controversy,” Colonna told BFM television when asked why Morocco had not made an official request to Paris for urgent assistance, despite accepting help from Spain, Britain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Photo: Reuters
“We are ready to help Morocco. It’s a sovereign Moroccan decision and it’s up to them to decide,” she said.
Paris has made 5 million euros (US$5.4 million) available for non-governmental organizations operating in Morocco, Colonna said.
French officials have repeatedly tried to play down any rift between the two countries, but a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron has been postponed several times over the past year.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI was in France when the quake hit, Colonna said.
French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin told France 2 earlier yesterday that Rabat, a “brotherly” nation, had the capabilities to cope alone with the rescue efforts.
France has also walked a diplomatic tightrope with Rabat, as it sought to improve its relations with Algeria, Morocco’s arch rival and another of Paris’ former colonies. Algiers backs the Polisario Front, a group which has fought for decades for independence for Western Sahara.
Four French citizens died in the earthquake that has killed more than 2,000 people.
France had more than 51,000 people living in Morocco, foreign ministry figures showed.
According to the Observatory for Immigration and Demographics, France has a Moroccan diaspora of about 1.5 million people, including 670,000 dual nationals.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant