Maghreban summit will be held before end of current year

The seventh Maghreban summit will be held in Algiers before the end of the current year.

The decision was made by the two-day meeting of the follow-up committee of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) held in Algiers on Monday and Tuesday.

The summit meeting, the first in five years, will be preceded by a meeting in October of the five countries' foreign ministers council.

The follow-up committee also decided that the group of experts entrusted with discussing the juridical aspects of the projects, decisions and accords to be submitted to the preparatory meetings of the UMA presidency council to convene at the headquarters of the UMA secretariat general in Rabat next June.

It equally called all the UMA institutions -- consultative council, court, university, science academy -- to draft exhaustive reports on the situation of these institutions and to make practical proposals for their reactivation.

The member countries were urged to speed up procedures to hold the constituent assembly of the Maghreban investment and foreign trade bank, so that the bank starts its activities.

The committee decided that the experts in charge of following up Euro-Mediterranean partnership hold a coordination meeting in Brussels next June. The experts will examine with the European side prospects of reactivating Euro-Maghreban dialogue.

The officials from the five North African countries who attended the Algiers meeting have all called for the revival of the union that they described as an inevitable strategic choice and a decisive project for Maghreban peoples. The Maghreban delegates expressed hope that the Maghreban march would overcome the difficulties that have so far hampered the UMA construction and vowed to foster Maghreban integration and solidarity.

The Moroccan delegation to the meeting was led by Mohamed Rachad Bouhlal, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.