Rabat, Morocco - Participants at a forum of the Islamic Conference's al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee have described Jerusalem as the key to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Moroccan media reported Thursday.

The committee is staging an international forum in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, whose King Mohammed VI chairs the committee. The two-day forum was ending on Thursday.

Rabat, Morocco - Eighty-two cases of the H1N1 influenza have been diagnosed in Morocco in a single day, press reports said Thursday.

The cases were discovered in the cities of Casablanca, Fes, Meknes, Kenintra and Rabat on October 28, Health Minister Yasmina Badou was quoted as saying.

The patients were receiving treatment at home.

Morocco has diagnosed a total 346 cases of the disease known as swine flu, which is not known to have claimed any lives in the North African country. (dpa)

Rabat, Morocco - The Moroccan national journalists' trade union SNPM has accused the government of breaking the law in closing the offices of a newspaper that published a caricature of the wedding of a cousin of King Mohammed VI.

Such measures were not within the law, the SNPM said in a communique quoted by press reports on Wednesday.

The union also urged the government to change a legal article that requires journalists to "respect" King Mohammed and his relatives.

Rabat  - Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who chairs the Islamic Conference's al-Quds (Jerusalem) committee, has condemned the recent clashes between Israeli security forces and Muslims near Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque.

Moroccan newspapers Tuesday quoted a royal communique condemning "premeditated violations which hurt Muslim feelings."

Israeli soldiers had deliberately implicated a Muslim holy site in their "aggressions against a Palestinian group," King Mohammed said.

Rabat, Morocco  - The controversial new "king's party" has won local elections in Morocco, the Interior Ministry announced Saturday.

The Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), formed by Fouad Ali el-Himma - a close friend of Moroccan King Mohammed VI, received about 22 per cent of the votes, the ministry said.

In second place, with about 19 per cent of the votes, was the nationalist conservative Istiqlal party of Prime Minister Abbas el- Fassi.

Rabat, Morocco - Moroccans began voting Friday in local elections amid suspense over the results of a controversial new "king's party."

About 13 million of the north African kingdom's more than 30 million residents were eligible to elect 27,000 members to 1,500 municipal councils.

The elections coincided with a decentralization process giving greater powers to the local authorities, in areas ranging from infrastructure to tourism.

Rabat, Morocco - Morocco's economy will grow 5.4 per cent this year despite the international economic crisis, Moroccan media Tuesday quoted the African Development Bank (AfDB) as saying.

The growth was slightly lower than in 2008, when it amounted to 5.7 per cent, the AfDB said in a report on African economic perspectives for 2009.

The Moroccan government earlier estimated this year's growth at 5.7 per cent.

The growth is seen as being based on a good harvest, government investments in infrastructure and increasing consumption. (dpa)

Rabat, Morocco - Increasing voices in Morocco want the country to demand damages from Spain for the use of chemical weapons during the 1920-26 Rif war, press reports said Thursday.

Colonial powers Spain and France put down a rebellion in the northern mountainous Rif region, which was part of the Spanish protectorate at the time.

Rabat, Morocco  - "This is our love story," two gay men, whose faces were not visible, said on the cover of the Moroccan weekly al-Michaal, which published a story on their wedding.

The simple prayer ceremony had no legal value, but the report by the small publication nevertheless apparently annoyed the authorities. It followed several similar ones, including a series of interviews by the daily Assabah with Samir Bargachi, a Moroccan living in Spain who heads Kifkif, the first association of Moroccan-born homosexuals.

Rabat, Morocco  - Morocco's flag carrier Royal Air Maroc (RAM) will launch a regional airline in the summer, the carrier announced Monday.

Royal Air Maroc Express will cover national and regional routes with planes made by ATR, a regional turboprop aircraft maker based in the southern French city of Toulouse.

RAM has ordered two ATR 42-600 planes with 48 seats, four ATR 72-600s with 70 seats, and has options for two additional ATR 72- 600s.

Deliveries of the new aircraft are due to begin in 2011. Meanwhile, ATR will lease four ATR 72-200s to RAM. (dpa)

Rabat, Morocco  - West and central Africa have rapidly growing aviation markets, but the local airlines are having a hard time defending their turf against foreign competition.

Many African airlines "have very short life spans," Jacques Courbin, president of the African air traffic control agency Asecna, told the magazine Jeune Afrique.

Rabat, Morocco - The Moroccan national airline Royal Air Maroc (RAM) has set a deadline for Senegal to prepare plans for the transfer of Air Senegal International
(ASI) to the Senegalese state, RAM said in a communique that was made public on Friday.

RAM holds 51 per cent and Senegal 49 per cent of ASI, the main Senegalese airline, which was created in 2000 with a capital of 10 million euros (13 million dollars).

Senegal's then Air Transport Minister Farba Senghor said in 2007 that Dakar would nationalize the carrier and inject up to 36 million euros into it to solve its financial problems.

Rabat, Morocco - Flooding sparked by heavy rains has killed 24 people and left hundreds homeless this month in northern and central Morocco, the Interior Ministry announced Monday.

More than 4,500 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to the ministry, which attributed the deaths mainly to collapsing buildings and rivers bursting their banks.

The worst hit regions included Sidi Slimane, 100 kilometres north of the capital Rabat.

Flooding continued Monday near the Mediterranean port of Saidia, where emergency workers were erecting dykes and digging canals in attempts to channel floodwater towards the sea.

Rabat/Berlin - Six people were believed to have drowned after a German sailing boat capsized off the port of Mahdia north of the Moroccan capital Rabat in stormy weather, Moroccan police sources said Thursday.

Two days after the accident occurred on Tuesday, there was virtually no hope of finding any of the victims alive, the sources said.

A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry also said that the six, who included three Germans, had probably drowned.

The seventh occupant of the boat, a 19-year-old German woman, managed to swim ashore.

Rabat  - Six people went missing when a German sailing boat capsized off the port of Mahdia north of the Moroccan capital Rabat in stormy weather, officials said Wednesday.

The seventh person on board, a German woman, swam ashore and was taken to hospital.

Those missing included three Germans, one of whom was a woman, a Slovenian man and an Austrian and a Danish woman.

A helicopter search for the victims was interrupted for the night and started again on Wednesday after the accident occurred on Tuesday. (dpa)

Rabat, Morocco - The Moroccan authorities managed to cut illegal cannabis production by 65 per cent in 2008, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

Morocco is the world's second biggest grower after Afghanistan of cannabis, from which hashish is made.

The goal now is to reduce cannabis cultivation land from 60,000 hectares in 2008 to 50,000 hectares this year, the ministry said in a press release.

The government has fought cannabis cultivation by destroying crops and with an information campaign trying to persuade farmers to replace the drug with other crops.

The Moroccan authorities have been accused of failing to develop the economy of the northern Rif region, which relies heavily on cannabis cultivation.

Rabat, Morocco - A cold wave described by residents as exceptional was hitting Morocco on Tuesday, raising hopes that snow and rainfall would help to supply water for the agricultural season.

This week's cold wave has affected all parts of the country, but mainly the Ifrane area in the northern Atlas mountains. Rain and snowfall were reported also in Oujda near the Algerian border.

"We have not seen such cold and snowfall in two decades," residents told national television, explaining that the demand for firefood had risen in rural areas.

Rabat, Morocco - Morocco expects the international financial crisis to boost its tourism, with European tourists now increasingly choosing the north African country over more distant destinations, Tourism Minister Mohammed Boussaid said Thursday.

The number of tourists visiting Morocco rose by 6 per cent to about 6.7 million in the first ten months of this year, according to figures issued by the ministry on Thursday.

Most of the tourists come from France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Italy.

Rabat, Morocco - Moroccan politicians Friday welcomed a decentralization announced by King Mohammed VI as part of the search for a solution to the Western Sahara conflict.

Rabat was seeking "serious" negotiations under the United Nations to solve the three-decade conflict, which opposes Morocco to the Saharawi independence movement Polisario Front, government spokesman Khalid Naciri said.

The negotiations should, however, be based on an autonomy for the desert territory, instead of a 1991 UN plan for a regional referendum on independence, Naciri stressed.

Madrid, Rabat - Morocco has called more than 100 imams based in Spain to a meeting in Marrakesh as part of its attempts to fight Islamist radicalism among Moroccan emigrants, the Spanish daily El Pais reported Friday.

Representatives of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs were to meet the imams over the week-end.

Moroccan government sources were not immediately available for comment.