Spain's Foreign Minister to meet Hillary Clinton over Aminatou Haidar case

Spain's Foreign Minister to meet Hillary Clinton over Aminatou Haidar case
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By m.p. - Dec 14, 2009 - 11:28 AM
The human rights activist is now on the fifth week of her hunger strike at Lanzarote Airport

Hillary Clinton - EFE

The Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, is in the United States this Monday and is due to meet the US Secretary of State to discuss the case of Aminatou Haidar, the Western Sahara human rights activist who is now in the fifth week of her hunger strike at Lanzarote Airport. The meeting takes place at 5.15 pm Spanish time, after which a joint press conference is expected.

Clinton has shown a personal interest in Haidar’s case, and spoke by telephone with the Moroccan Foreign Minister, Taieb Fassi-Fihri, last Thursday, to pass on her concerns about the activist’s health and that the situation should be resolved as quickly as possible. The State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, however said on Friday that he did not know if the United States would be playing a mediating part in the situation.

EFE notes that the US successfully mediated in the conflict between Spain and Morocco over the Isla de Perejil in 2002, an uninhabited island 200 metres off the Moroccan coast whose sovereignty is disputed by both countries.

Aminatou Haidar has been in Lanzarote since she was expelled for writing her nationality as Sahrawi on the entry form at Laayoune Airport, the administrative capital of Western Sahara. She has survived on nothing more than one and a half litres of sugared water every day since she started her protest to be allowed to return home.

The UPyD politician, Rosa Díez, arrived in Laayoune on Sunday to personally deliver a letter the activist had written to her two children, aged 13 and 15. One of the teenagers told a journalist from El Mundo after the meeting, ‘I suffer for my mother, but I cannot ask her to stop her hunger strike’.

The Moroccan police later expelled Rosa Díez from the home of another Western Sahara activist, telling the politician that she did not have permission to be there and that the only visit authorised for ‘humanitarian reasons’ was to Haidar’s children.

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