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.

Rabat, Morocco  - Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Wednesday congratulated US president-elect Barack Obama, praising his "high human qualities" and political capacity.

Rabat, Morocco  - A Moroccan appeals court Thursday let stand a ruling that would require the nation's largest newspaper and its publisher to pay record amounts of damages in a defamation case.

The ruling requires the al-Massae newspaper and its chief editor, Rashid Ninny, to pay damages of up to 6 million dirham (more than 700,000 dollars) to a group of four district attorneys. It is the largest damages ruling in Morocco's media history.

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