Nato urged to keep eye on the south

MADRID: Spain is lobbying for Nato to pay more attention to security threats on its southern flank when the military alliance gathers for a summit in Madrid later this week.

But with the war in Ukraine entering its fifth month, the priority for Spain’s Nato partners remains firmly on deterring Russian in the east.

When Nato leaders convene in Madrid tomorrow to Thursday they are due to revamp the alliance’s strategic concept, which outlines its main security tasks and challenges but has not been revised since 2010.

Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has been pushing for Nato to broaden its scope to help deal with non-military threats such as “the political use of energy resources and illegal immigration” in Africa.

“The threats are as much from the southern flank as from the eastern flank,” he told a Madrid news conference on Wednesday.

Madrid is also concerned about lawlessness and violent Islamist movements in the Sahel region, a vast territory stretching across the south of the Sahara Desert.

The issue is particularly acute for Spain, a main gateway into Europe for irregular migration from Africa and a country which relies on Algeria for gas supplies.

Last year Morocco allowed thousands of migrants to enter Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta during a diplomatic crisis over the disputed Western Sahara, prompting Madrid to accuse Rabat of “blackmail”.

Although the two countries recently normalised their relations after Spain ended its decades-long position of neutrality over Western Sahara to publicly support Morocco’s stance, the migration crisis hasn’t come to an end.

On Friday, about 2,000 migrants tried to storm the border with Melilla, the other Spanish enclave on Morocco’s northern coast. At least 23 died in the incursion, making it the deadliest incident to occur at the borders of the two Spanish enclaves — the only borders between the EU and Africa.