Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and his Venezuelan counterpart met for the second time in less than three months. Their meetings come after the two countries cut diplomatic ties in 2009. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza paid Morocco a visit on the 10th and 11th of December to attend the Intergovernmental Conference, hosted in Marrakech to ratify the Global Compact on Migration. On the sidelines of this event, the senior official, held a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita. This meeting was highlighted by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry through Twitter. «Through Marrakech, Venezuela contributes to multipolarity and supports the strengthening of friendly relations between nations», wrote the ministry, reporting that «Minister Jorge Arreaza met with Nasser Bourita, the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation». #AHORA | Desde Marrakech, consolidando el mundo pluripolar y las relaciones de amistad con los pueblos, el canciller Jorge Arreaza se reúne con Nasser Bourita, ministro de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación Internacional de Marruecos pic.twitter.com/OtOtbSSevF — Cancillería ?? (@CancilleriaVE) 10 décembre 2018 «The meeting aims to strengthen bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to discuss and share views on human rights and migration», reports a Venezuelan online newspaper. On the other hand, this meeting went completely unnoticed in Morocco. The second meeting in less than three months The meeting that brought the Venezuelan Foreign Minister and his Moroccan counterpart together is the second of its kind. In fact, the two ministers met on September the 27th in New York on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly. For the record, Rabat cut diplomatic ties with Caracas in January 2009. Morocco summoned its ambassador in the Latin American country for supporting the Polisario Front. But since then, the Kingdom has changed its policy regarding countries that recognize «SADR». Indeed, Morocco normalized diplomatic relations with Cuba, which has been one of the countries that recognizes «SADR» since the 1980s. More than that, Cuban President Miguel Dias-Canel received on December the 4th, in Havana the Polisario's leader Brahim Ghali, who traveled to the country for a «four-day official visit». This visit comes as Morocco and Cuba formally normalized in 2017 their bilateral ties after decades of diplomatic rupture. Despite these two meetings, relations between Morocco and Venezuela were not that good during the last couple of years. In April 2017, the representative of Caracas at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) meeting, held in New York, clashed with Morocco's permanent representative to the UN in New York Omar Hilale, after he said that the ODD achievements target «occupied territories», referring to Palestine and the Sahara.
