The visit of the delegation, composed of Interior Minister, Chakib Benmoussa, Minister Delegate for Foreign Affairs, Taieb Fassi Fihri, and Minister Delegate in the Interior, Fouad Ali El Himma, is part of Morocco's consultations with world capitals about the autonomy project due to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council. It aims at explaining the broad lines and the general context of the Moroccan project.
    The plan consists in granting substantial autonomy to the Southern Provinces, a territory known as the Sahara and claimed since the mid-Seventies by the Polisario to establish what it calls the Sahrawi Republic (SADR). The Sahara was under Spanish rule and was retrieved by Morocco under the Madrid Accord signed with Spain and Mauritania.

    Beyond solving the Sahara dispute, the autonomy plan aims also, and no less importantly, "to effectively re-launch the Maghreb Arab Union" [a regional grouping that gathers Algeria, Libya, Mauritanian, Morocco and Tunisia] and thus consolidate peace and achieve progress and prosperity for the region's people," Benmoussa told the press after the meeting with the Tunisian head of State.

    The project takes stock of the regional specificities, meets the expectations of the local population and gives them the right to manage their affairs within the framework of democracy and the respect of the international standards relating to autonomy.

    Meanwhile, another top delegation composed of king’s advisor, Mohamed Moatassim, and head of the Moroccan intelligence, Yassine Mansouri met with the Qatari head of State, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani and explained to him the broad lines of Morocco’s project.

    In the recent period, Morocco has launched an intensive diplomatic initiative to inform western and Arab capitals (Madrid, Paris, Washington, London, Berlin, Moscow, Dakar, Riyadh, Kuwait, Manama, Abu Dhabi, Nouakchott, and Tripoli) of the project, in a last straight line before submitting the plan to the UNSC.