AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
RABAT: Morocco on Sunday celebrated the 50th anniversary of the creation of its Royal Armed Forces with its first military parade in the capital Rabat in 30 years.
King Mohammed VI took the salute as supreme commander and chief of general staff of the armed forces.
Official guests from France, the United States and other countries watched several thousand soldiers parade to the strains of the Green March, which symbolised the 1975 march of 350,000 Moroccans into the Western Sahara ahead of annexation of this territory by Morocco after the withdrawal of Spain and Mauritania in the 1970s.
A guerrilla war with the Polisario Front separatist movement challenging Rabat's sovereignty over the Western Sahara ended in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire.
A UN 463-strong peacekeeping force is in Western Sahara pending a political settlement for the region.
The 200,000 strong Moroccan forces have particpated since the 1960s in various peacekeping operations, including those in Africa, the Serbian province Kosovo and in Haiti.
The last such large-scale parade here in Rabat was in 1976, and ended in catastrophe with a mid-air collision between two air force fighters.
Foreign military detachments marching with Moroccan troops in the parade included those of France and the African states of Senegal, Gabon, Niger, the Congo Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A naval review was scheduled for Monday in Agadir Bay, with warships from France, the United States, Britain, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain participating alongside those of Morocco.
