Bahrain opens consulate in Western Sahara city of Laayoune

Bahrain’s foreign minister on Monday arrived in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune recognized recently as a territory of Morocco to inaugurate the island kingdom’s newest consulate in the area, according to an official statement.

Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Bahrain’s foreign minister, was accompanied to Laayoune by his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita.

“The Minister and his Moroccan counterpart participated in the opening of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Bahrain in the Moroccan city of Laayoune.

The Bahraini foreign minister said that the opening of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Bahrain “in Laayoune, the capital of the Moroccan Sahara, constitutes a “historic stage” in the strong relations between the two kingdoms.

“The Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that the two countries are laying an ‘additional building block in the edifice of their strong and established relations,’ noting that his country ‘will always stand by Morocco’ in defending its territorial integrity and preserving its sovereignty over its entire territory,” an official statement from the Bahraini Foreign Ministry quoted al-Zayani as saying.

The Western Sahara is a vast swathe of desert on Africa’s Atlantic coast was a disputed former Spanish colony.

Morocco controls 80 percent of the territory, including its phosphate deposits and its fishing waters.