Morocco's indigenous Berber people, descendants of North Africa's pre-Arab inhabitants, are struggling to make their voices heard despite their ancient Amazigh-language winning official recognition in 2011 after decades of campaigning.

The sweeping Arab Spring protests that erupted that year brought hopes of empowerment for the region's traditionally marginalized Berber communities.

President Barack Obama praised the "leadership" of Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Friday after holding wide-ranging talks with the North African monarch for the first time at the White House.

In a joint statement released by the United States and Morocco following the talks, Obama applauded the king for "deepening democracy, promoting economic progress and human development" in the past decade.

A senior Moroccan official rejected recent criticism of the country's human rights record on Thursday ahead of King Mohammed VI's upcoming visit to the United States.

And in an exclusive interview to Agence France Presse, Morocco's Deputy Foreign Minister Mbarka Bouaida renewed opposition to a U.S. plan to broaden the U.N. mission to the Western Sahara.

Moroccan security forces drove back a crowd of about 1,000 migrants who charged at the border fence trying to climb into Spain's north African territory of Melilla, Spanish authorities said on Wednesday.

"A very large group of about a thousand sub-Saharan immigrants" rushed to the fence and were "held back and dispersed by the Moroccan forces" overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday, the Spanish government delegation in Melilla said in a statement.

The trial of a suspected British pedophile in Morocco has been adjourned until January after his Moroccan lawyer withdrew from the case, an activist present in the courtroom told Agence France Presse.

Robert Bill appeared at Tuesday's hearing, in the northern town of Tetouan, which was also attended by relatives of his three alleged Moroccan victims, said Mohammed Benaissa, who heads the Northern Observatory for Human Rights.

A Spanish court refused on Monday to extradite a child rapist who was arrested in Spain having been controversially pardoned by the king of Morocco.

Daniel Galvan, 63, was among 48 Spanish prisoners pardoned by King Mohammed VI and freed from jail following a visit in mid-July to Morocco by Spain's King Juan Carlos.

A Spanish court Thursday released a sex killer dubbed "the elevator rapist", the third such convict freed under a European human rights ruling that also benefits the armed Basque separatist group ETA.

Pedro Luis Gallego Fernandez, 53, was sentenced to 273 years in jail in 1995 for raping and killing two girls aged 17 and 19 and a string of other sex attacks.

Ministers from countries across the Sahel and Maghreb agreed Thursday to create a border security training center in a bid to confront Islamist-linked violence plaguing the huge desert region.

Delegates hailed the proposal in the "Rabat Declaration" adopted by 19 countries at a conference in Morocco's capital as an important step towards curbing jihadist unrest in the Sahara, notably in Mali and Libya.

In a cluster of white-washed houses on Morocco's north coast, newly-arrived Syrian families have found shelter thousands of miles from their ruined homeland but are struggling to rebuild their lives.

Since the summer, more and more Syrians have crossed from Algeria into Morocco without visas, part of the massive displacement caused by a conflict now thought to have killed more than 115,000 people and created the worst refugee crisis in nearly two decades.

Moroccan lawmakers have drafted a bill threatening jail terms for sexual harassment that will soon be submitted to parliament, media reported on Thursday.

The proposed law would affect the author of "any unwelcome act against a third party in public spaces, whether an act, remark or gesture of a sexual nature, or intended to obtain a sexual act," said Arabic-language daily Al-Massae.