Word: rabat
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...village with Soviet-made Katyusha rockets, and claimed that it shot down a Moroccan air force Mirage fighter with a SA-7 missile. The Polisario command in Algiers also claimed that its forces had killed 329 Moroccan soldiers in a series of engagements near Laayoun, but Moroccan officials in Rabat flatly denied the claim...
...military forces a new impetus and the Moroccan public a strong boost. One is the Carter Administration's decision to reverse a long-standing U.S. policy by providing Morocco with badly needed arms assistance, notably Bronco planes and helicopter gunships. The other is Rabat's deliberate attempt to modify the army's defensive garrison mentality and try to seize the military initiative with an elite new fighting force. After touring Moroccan positions in the western Sahara for five days, TIME Correspondent David Halevy cabled this report...
...brigade is part of the Moroccan army's elite new Saharan task force, commanded by King Hassan's intelligence chief, Brigadier Achmed Dlimi. This "Uhud Force," named after a battle famous in Arab history, has been given the best of Rabat's military machine: escorting helicopter gunships, air cover from U.S.-made F-5s and advanced French Mirages flying out of Saharan air bases at Laayoun and Dakhia. Young Moroccan officers compete for assignment to Dlimi's force, and more than 60% of the soldiers are native Saharans who know the desert terrain as well...
...fears that the arms sale would merely provoke the Polisarios into seeking more sophisticated weapons from Algeria, Libya and even the Soviet Union. Moreover, the planes, if delivered, would be vulnerable to the Soviet-made Sam7 missiles that Algeria has supplied the Polisarios. As one U.S. arms dealer in Rabat sees it, the additional American arms would simply "increase the casualty rate on both sides...
...merely because that country now supplies 9% of U.S. crude oil imports. Last week President Carter decided that the U.S. must support Morocco with the arms sale, though the transaction has also to be approved by a wary Congress. Then he sent Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Rabat to urge the King to seek a compromise. At the same time Brzezinski left for Algiers to attend the 25th anniversary celebration of the beginning of Algeria's war of independence from France-and to explain the Administration's position to Algerian President Benjedid Chadli...