RABAT, Morocco (AP) — In a deepening diplomatic rift with Spain, Morocco’s Foreign Ministry says the crisis between the two countries was “about trust and mutual respect that has been broken.” It said that is a far larger issue than the presence in Spain of the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, the avowed enemy of the North African kingdom. The increasingly nasty spat started when Brahim Ghali, who heads the Polisario Front which is fighting Morocco over Western Sahara, checked in at a Spanish hospital for treatment of COVID-19 under false identity. Morocco annexed the disputed territory in the 1970s.
