Morocco, Spain restore full diplomatic ties

RABAT, Morocco -- Morocco and Spain announced Thursday the restoration of full diplomatic ties, ending a 15-month dispute that peaked with a military standoff over a tiny, uninhabited island.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI met with Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio in the coastal resort of Agadir and later said he would send Ambassador Abdesslam Baraka back to Spain, the official MAP news agency reported.

Palacio said a Spanish ambassador could return to Rabat within days.

Relations between the two countries, which are separated only by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, disintegrated in October 2001 when Morocco called back its ambassador without explanation.

Ties were broken altogether in July 2002 when Spanish troops ejected a group of Moroccan soldiers who had occupied an island off the Moroccan coast that Spain claimed it had controlled for centuries.

The dispute over the island -- known in Morocco as Leila, or "Night," and in Spain as Perejil, or "Parsley" -- was the most serious conflict between the nations in decades. The U.S. later brokered a deal to remove all forces from the island.

Morocco also reportedly was angered by Madrid's call for a self-determination referendum on the Western Sahara, a disputed territory formerly controlled by Spain but annexed by Morocco in the mid-1970s.

The two countries have had other disputes over fishing and the flow of illegal immigrants to Spain.