Saad Eddine Othmani on two-day official visit to Algeria

Rabat - Independent Maghreb Press Agency - Morocco's new foreign minister Saad Eddine Othmani will visit Algiers next week, his ministry said Friday, as Rabat seeks to normalise ties strained for decades over the disputed Western Sahara region.

The two-day visit starting Monday will include talks with his counterpart Mourad Medelci and a meeting with Algeria's veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it said.
The relations between Morocco and Algeria have been strained for decades by the long-running dispute over the Western Sahara.

Morocco's 1975 illegal annexation of the territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, sparked a war between its forces and forces of the Polisario Front



"Whatever the differences, it's abnormal not to have a normal relationship with a neighbouring country", Othmani's predecessor Taeib Fassi Fihri said in November following talks with Medelci on the sidelines of an Arab League meeting in Rabat.