Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia voice will to boost Maghreban Union
Maghreb, Politics, 2/17/2000

King Mohammed VI of Morocco, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia voiced in an exchange of messages the will to enhance the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), which marks this Thursday its 11th anniversary.

UMA is a strategic choice that "will help us build our union on firm bases, founded on complementarity, solidarity and fruitful cooperation and invest our peoples' potentials for more prosperity and for a more dignified tomorrow," King Mohammed VI said in a message to President Ben Ali.

UMA --set up in 1989 in Marrakesh by Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia-- has so far failed to develop into a full-fledged regional grouping, mainly due to differences between Morocco and Algeria. Algeria's direct involvement in the Moroccan Sahara issue has braked all efforts to translate into reality the UMA charter, providing for full integration among the five nations.

In the messages exchanged between the king and the Tunisian president, King Mohammed VI underlined that Morocco will spare no effort to materialize the Maghreban peoples' aspirations of development, progress and prosperity, while President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali said that UMA "is the best frame of cooperation and complementarity between our two peoples for the consolidation of security and stability in our region in the context of the challenges posed and the proliferation of regional groupings."

In his message to King Mohammed VI, Algerian President Bouteflika stressed his country's determination to consolidate ties of brotherhood and neighborliness with Morocco, to lay down the foundations of cooperation between the two countries and peoples and to materialize their legitimate aspirations to resuming the Maghreban unification process.

"The construction of the Maghreban union was and will always be on top of the choices of Algeria," he said, adding that his country has always striven for the materialization of these choices and has always deemed them a national priority and a strategic and decisive project in which it invested all its energy and to which it extended constant backing.

Bouteflika, who voiced Algeria's esteem for King Mohammed VI and for the Moroccan people, said his country is firmly attached to hoisting bilateral cooperation.

Bouteflika added that Algiers will do its best to materialize the Maghreban peoples' aspirations to more cohesion, harmony and solidarity.

Relations between Morocco and Algeria soured over the past years in view of Algiers' direct involvement in the Sahara issue, and borders between Morocco and Algeria have been closed since 1994 when evidence showed the involvement of Algerian-born French nationals in a terrorist attack against a luxury hotel in Marrakesh (southern Morocco), killing two Spanish tourists.

Winds of reconciliation between the two Maghreban nations started to blow after the election in April 1999 of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who multiplied goodwill statements towards Morocco. On the morrow of his election, Bouteflika actually sent Morocco warm messages, vowing to improve neighborliness ties with the kingdom and to upgrade cooperation between the two countries. However, a few months later, he repeatedly made anti-Moroccan statements, mainly charging Morocco of sheltering camps of Islamist extremist groups.

In response to Bouteflika's message, King Mohammed VI said the Maghreban union "is a historic fatality and a geo-strategic need, in view of our shared will to take up the challenges thrown at the Maghreban region in an international environment marked by an accelerated globalization.

Previous Stories:
  The secretary of Arab Maghreb Union arrives in Mauritania   (11/18/1999)
  Report: No Maghreb summit this year   (11/12/1999)
  UAE says it succeeded in appeasing Moroccan-Algerian tensions   (10/20/1999)

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