Pompeo to visit ‘critical partner’ Morocco

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel next week to Morocco, seeing the kingdom as a partner in US regional goals including normalising relations with Israel, officials said on Wednesday.

Pompeo, the highest-level US visitor to Morocco since President Donald Trump’s election, will arrive in Rabat on December 4 and meet with King Mohammed VI, the State Department said.

A State Department official said that Morocco was a “critical partner for us across the range of issues”.

“Morocco plays a great role across the region as an important partner in promoting tolerance [and] has these quiet ties and relationship with Israel as well,” the official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.

Morocco has unofficially welcomed Israeli investors and tourists. Some 3,000 Jews live in Morocco, a fraction of the number from before the 1948 creation of Israel on Palestinian land but still the largest community in the Arab world.

The State Department official also called Morocco a “great counterterrorism partner”, including by bringing back nationals who joined the Daesh terror group in Syria — the sort of repatriation resisted by European allies of the United States.

Pompeo will also visit NATO ally Portugal, where he will meet recently reelected Prime Minister Antonio Costa on December 6, and earlier in the week join Trump at NATO’s 70th anniversary summit in London.