Today (Thursday 5 July), Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Minister of State for the Middle East Alistair Burt hosted the first UK-Morocco Strategic Dialogue.
The Dialogue aims to deepen and strengthen our cooperation with Morocco across politics, economics, security and culture.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said:
I was delighted to host Moroccan Foreign Minister Bourita and Secretary of State Boucetta today for the first ever UK-Morocco Strategic Dialogue, here in London.
The UK and Morocco have an illustrious 800-year old history of exchanges and friendship, so establishing this annual forum, alternating between the UK and Morocco, is a welcome and natural step. With many areas of interest, we agreed to focus our discussion on four themes: Political-Diplomatic, Security, Economic and Cultural.
We exchanged letters on how the Dialogue might work over the years to come and discussed how a working group could maintain contact and momentum.
We also discussed transport and tourist security, regional politics, trade and investment.
I was particularly pleased to sign an education agreement that will allow British schools to open in Morocco, giving Moroccans the opportunity to study using our curriculum, and our schools a dynamic and growing new market.
We look forward to further cooperation in the coming months, and indeed to the next dialogue in Rabat.
