MOROCCO COUNRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS A ... - ADST

egional subjects. His ability to be helpful, given his distance from the problem, has varied in
effectiveness but it has been a characteristic of the King that we have always nurtured. I
personally think that his usefulness has been overemphasized, but I understand why we
encouraged him.
Q: How about the United States role? I think you’ve touched on this before. We certainly have a
long history with Morocco. I guess the consulate in Tangier goes back centuries or a long time.
There was a military presence I think at the time you were there. What else can one say about
our interests? Obviously it’s partly related to Morocco’s geographic position.
DARIS: As you say the consulate in Tangier I believe is our oldest U.S. owned diplomatic
property overseas. It is still in our possession. There is a foundation now running it and they give
conferences and hold colloquia, and I think give some grants as well. Morocco geographically
sits astride the Straits of Gibraltar and has feet in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic. In times
of war, whether the Second World War or the Cold War, it was of some value to us. When I was
there we were phasing out our last navy facility and actually closed down Kenitra which was the
last military base, military presence, we had there. It was a small naval communications center.
The U.S. Navy presence was a potential political liability for Hassan. Subsequent to that,
however, the U.S. military got its foot back in but Hassan’s motivation was to influence the U.S.
position on the burning issue, the Western Sahara.
Our assets in Morocco were never central to our strategic posture. And, as is the case in so many
third world countries where we have military facilities, it depends on the conflict whether they
can be used at all. I think it is a useful exercise for those who seek to strive to obtain facilities,
military facilities especially, to try to project under what circumstances you can actually use
those facilities. That is because countries, if they don’t agree with what we want to do, can and
often do prevent us from using their territory. It isn’t very useful for military planners to have
expensive facilities that they can’t use. I’ve seen this occur time and time again.
Q: At the time that you were there we had, and I guess we still have, a consulate in Casablanca. I
hope it is still there.
DARIS: Yes it is.
Q: I think there was at least one reporting officer, a labor-political position there. Did you spend
much time in Casablanca yourself or try to draw on the reporting by the consul general and the
labor-political officer there?
DARIS: Ironically that labor job was the one I was initially slated to go to. The situation went
back and forth and I finally ended up in Rabat. The Casablanca Consulate people came to us
more often than we went to them because Casa was their territory and they were covering things
pretty well. Some of the opposition movements were more present down there than in Rabat and
it was that aspect that drew me there when I did go, but it was potential duplication of effort for
Embassy people to be spending too much time doing reporting in Casablanca.
Q: We talked about the role of Morocco vis-à-vis the Middle East peace process, the