Spain's Rocky Straits

...While officially accepting this explanation, Spanish diplomats suspect that London and Gibraltar are glad for any excuse to delay the encounter, which is expected to reverse progress made during the past year on cooperation and sovereignty...

...Since the Minister's delegate for European affairs has an even bigger picture of the rock on the wall of his office, when British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe visited here, in November 1985, Fernandez Ordonez received him in his antechamber so that Gibraltar would not overshadow their meeting...

...Despite officials senior to him having no police protection, he insisted on two bodyguards whom he used to run errands and carry his bags...

...The 1984 agreement was a feather in the cap of his predecessor at the Foreign Ministry, Fernando Moran, and he is anxious to show that he too can earn his feathers...

...In fact, they are a lively Andalusian-Indian-Jew-ish-Maltese mixture, speaking Spanish and English...

...Matters have improved considerably since the 1960s when Generalissimo Francisco Franco, pressed by a Right-wing Catholic lobby, closed the border with Gibraltar and his radio stations beamed insults at the colony, calling its inhabitants rock-apes and at times making them the butt of anti-Semitic attacks...

...Dudu himself appeared to enjoy the job, especially the perks it brought...

...In their opposition days, Spain's Socialists supported the Polisario Front...

...In September, Interior Minister Jose Barrionuevo persuaded the leader of Melilla's Moslems, Omar Mohammed Dudu, to accept the highly paid post of consultant on Moslem affairs created especially for him at the ministry...

...The Interior Ministry's advances to the Ceutans were also intended to try and prevent the two communities from coordinating future protests against Madrid...

...Yet it does cast a shadow on Anglo-Spanish dealings...

...In February 1985 all remaining border restrictions were lifted, reflecting an Anglo-Spanish agreement the preceding November to discuss joint cooperation and the future sovereignty of the rock...

...It offers generous economic terms in return for fishing rights in Moroccan waters, and it supplies his Army with military equipment to fight the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara, which Morocco seized from Spain 11 years ago...

...Members of his government have nevertheless held meetings with Dudu, whom they were happy to have working discreetly for them in Melilla...

...After all, democratic Spain is not Communist China...

...They challenge Spain to do more to win over the people of Gibraltar, and insist thin-skinned Spanish reactions to talk of self-determination on the rock are unlikely to produce a change of heart among its inhabitants...

...Her Conservative government's pledge to respect the wishes of Gibraltar's inhabitants, they suggest, is hypocritical...

...they ask...

...Dudu rejects this formula on the grounds that it would slow down the process and act as a filter, but the Ceuta representatives appeared to welcome the offer...

...Spanish ministers, even as they try to play down the situation, admit privately that they are concerned about the "Algerianization" of events in the enclaves...

...The death last winter of a young Moslem during a police charge on a demonstration, and attacks on Moslem quarters in the spring by drunken Spanish rioters increased tension in the enclaves...

...Electoral concerns also weigh...

...Until recently Moslems had no right to state-financed medical and welfare services...

...The Gibraltarians have always been free to discuss anything they like, declares a member of the Foreign Office, "yet Madrid expects us to rap them on the knuckles when they start talking about their own future...

...The visit to London this spring of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia helped to thaw state relations...

...Instead of bringing them to their knees as intended, Franco's strategy provoked a rejection of Spain and closer identification with Britain...

...The issue of sovereignty over the enclaves is a popular one in Morocco, but King Hassan is on good terms with Spain's socialist government...

...A second described as positive Gonzalez' urging a resolution within the next four years—for reasons the Foreign Office would welcome: "If Felipe starts taking a personal interest in Gibraltar, he'll soon realize that nothing can be achieved quickly and thus restrain Fernandez Ordonez...

...The majority cannot vote in Spanish elections and many, being illegal immigrants or the offspring of illegal immigrants, have no civic status, either Spanish or Moroccan...

...The main problem preventing a settlement, he added , is that Gibraltar is above all an emotional issue for everyone concerned, "a three-way paranoia affecting Britons, Spaniards and Gibraltarians alike...

...Spain is willing to reopen talks with Melilla's Moslem community— but, as one official told me, "never again with a histrionic character like Dudu"— provided the agenda sticks to social and civic issues...

...Dudu has suggested that Moslems withdraw their children from Spanish schools unless they are taught Arabic and the Koran, and he favors setting up a "parallel" administration if the community is not allowed to vote in next year's municipal election...

...Alarmed, the government has met with a delegation of Ceuta Moslems and proposed issuing members of their community provisional documents pending the granting of Spanish citizenship...

...Another source of puzzled irritation is why Gibraltarians dislike the idea of belonging to Spain when some 80,000 Brits live under the Spanish flag...

...In his view, Spain damaged its cause by backing Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands...

...Several Spanish diplomats, however, have privately criticized their Foreign Minister...

...Since then, the economy of Gibraltar has prospered—against the private hopes of some Spanish officials...

...Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish for over four centuries and officers consider them as much a part of Spain as, say, Valencia or Granada...

...Spaniards, on the other hand, see the agreement as meaning that some long-term solution must be reached, with a first stage possibly in vol ving some kind of condominium...

...The 1984 agreement says the two sides should negotiate various sticking points, including sovereignty, in a way that "would respect the wishes" of Gibraltar's inhabitants...

...Dudu and his followers have threatened to print their own identity documents if they cannot obtain Spanish ones...

...Now that they are in power, political expediency has taught them that it is more important for Spain to keep Hassan happy...

...Fernandez Ordonez recognizes the need for a natural osmosis between the inhabitants of Gibraltar and its Spanish hinterland—which existed until Franco closed the border—but he would like to speed up the process...

...Their attachment to Ceuta and Melilla is visceral,' explains a senior official, "they cannot conceive Spain without them...

...While the "patriotic honor" of Spanish Army men makes them expect the government to keep up the pressure over Gibraltar, their military duty is to defend Spain's enclaves in Morocco...

...King Hassan and other Moroccan leaders have said that the day Gibraltar returns to Spain, Ceuta and Melilla must go to Morocco...

...Re-elected only six months ago, the Socialist government already has its eyes on the 1990 balloting: Felipe Gonzalez said recently that he wants a settlement on Gibraltar within the next four years...

...But because of the rock, even though both countries are members of nato and the European Community (EEC), Spain does not enjoy the same political camaraderie with the UK as it does with France, Germany or Italy...

...Britain's decision to postpone until next January a meeting between the Conservative Howe and Social Democrat Fernandez Ordonez that was supposed to take place in November has not helped to smooth Spanish feelings—ruffled by recent discussions in Gibraltar of semi-independence via a status of free association with the UK, rather like that of the Cook Islands (accidentally renamed the Coon Islands by the Spanish daily El Pais...

...Spain has lifted air space restrictions for civilian flights, and Gibraltar has agreed to pay pensions to Spanish workers who lost their jobs on the rock when Franco closed the border...

...Refusing to consider the beam that is in its own eye, Spanish officialdom describes Gibraltar as an anachronistic colonial situation...

...If a quick solution could be found for Hong Kong, why not for Gibraltar...

...The Spanish enclaves, in contrast, might have been lifted from a Left-wing anti-colonialist textbook: A Spanish, predominantly Right-wing, majority is clustered around a military garrison, and a fast-multiplying Moslem minority lives in circumstances that, to quote a ranking Madrid politician, are "unacceptable ina Western democracy, even if they are better than those of the average Moroccan...

...Madrid is unhappy, though, that no advances have been made on what it considers two major issues: the airport and sovereignty...

...A Spanish bank plans to open a Gibraltar office next year— the first ever...

...The Spanish administration is willing to grant the rock a generous measure of self-government by converting it into Spain's 18 th autonomous region, and to let everyone keep their British nationality...

...Dudu said he resigned because the Spanish authorities were dragging their feet on their promise to grant citizenship to the Moslems...

...His "haste to reach some sort of settlement is counterproductive, because it puts the Gibraltarians on edge,'' one told me recently...

...The government has been irritated by a Moslem resolution approved in Melilla that describes it as an "Arab, Moslem city of the Maghreb...

...Gonzalez' government would like dual Spanish-British control of the airport, but British diplomats say that would upset the Gibraltarians...

...and none among Ceuta's 14,000 or so Moslems...

...We can't hand them Gibraltar on a plate," the British authorities respond...

...In Gibraltar, no imperial power oppresses natives...

...ist Felipe Gonzalez...

...So, for all their official puffing and posing, Britain, Spain and Morocco are for the time quite happy to keep their game of territorial tiddlywinks a friendly one...

...The British Foreign Office and press have focused on the opening of the border and paid little attention to the biggest bone of contention...

...But before two months passed, Dudu resigned—pressed in part by some of his followers who considered his j ob a sellout to Madrid, in part by Islamic fundamentalists whose influence in the enclaves and their Moroccan hinterland is growing...

...Of the two men closest to Dudu, one is a fundamentalist and the other spouts the cliches of Left-wing "liberation" movements...

...The Foreign Office's reason for delaying the meeting is that Britain's presidency of the EEC during the sec-ondhalfofl986 has overloaded Howe's agenda...

...But now, they are questioning the docility of their Trojan horse...

...Both represent options that could one day pose a danger to the Moroccan monarchy...

...Interior Ministry officials say Dudu made fools of them, yet they admit that whatever improvements have reached Moslems in the enclaves have been a result of his demagogic brew of threats and promises...

...But Britain and Spain have each interpreted the document differently...

...A conciliatory mood set in with the October 1982 election victory of SocialJanice V alls-Russell, a previous contributor to The New Leader, is a writer on French and Spanish affairs...

...Their onlyfearisthatdemagogymight drive the King to inflame the issueofthe enclaves if the stability of his throne were threatened by Islamic Fundamentalists or the nationalist Istiqlal Party that he has so far been able to keep under control...

...He unsuccessfully tried to push onto the ministry a $23,000 bill for the decoration and furnishing of a flat he occupied here...

...Only 418 Melillans have been given Spanish nationality so far this year, out of an estimated total of 17,000...

...The violence scared Madrid into seeking ways of improving the communities' status and living conditions, both on humanitarian grounds and to avoid a pro-Moroccan "liberation" movement...

...Hassan's balancing act—that is, his keeping the Islamic states relatively happy while maintaining ties with the United States and Western Europe—is a delicate one and he does not want to be sidetracked by Ceuta and Melilla if he can help it...

...The question of sovereignty is even thornier...

...Some Spanish officials believe a breakthrough will be difficult so long as Margaret Thatcher is Britain's prime minister...

...PROBLEMS OF SOVEREIGNTY Spain's Rocky Straits BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Madrid Whenever Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Fernandez Ordonez looks up from his desk, a print of a head-shaped promontory frowns at him, the constant reminder of an issue that has been nagging since he took office in July 1985: Spain's desire to recover the sovereignty over Gibraltar that it lost to Britain in 1714...

...Although the official "we-want-Gibraltar-back" line is shared by the whole government, Defense Minister Narcis Serra and his aides are well aware that Spain cannot both regain Gibraltar and retain control of Ceuta and Melilla, its enclaves across the straits on the Moroccan coast...

...Private ones between the two, related, families are good, as are those between ordinary Brits and Spaniards: Spain's beaches are the favorite of British holidaymak-ers, and English is the language Spanish children and adults are most eager to master after their own...

...Britons who live on the Costa del Sol do their weekend shopping on the rock and use its airport to travel to and from the UK...

...By Christmas of that year his government had opened the border for pedestrians...

...The Moroccan authorities are watching with a mixture of satisfaction and embarrassment...

...Ads in the Spanish press invite Spaniards to "come and see Gibraltar," reminding them that they need passports...