.jpeg&w=400) "Al Khalije" Emirati newspaper said Thursday, December 27, 2018, that the call launched by Morocco to Algeria in favor of a "frank and direct" dialogue had the virtue of "breaking the long standstill of the Maghreb Union ".
In an article entitled "Maghreb aspires to a revival with its thirtieth anniversary", the newspaper explains that "the long-standing immobility of the Maghreb Union has been broken", evoking the speech by HM King Mohammed VI who called in November for a "frank and direct dialogue" with Algeria, on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the Green March.
The UAE media adds that "a very dynamic diplomatic and media activity has begun to reactivate the Maghreb authorities after a freeze of nearly three decades" and this "to avoid the loss of the dream of regional integration".
The newspaper believes that despite the bridges of exchange and complementarity that unite the peoples of the Maghreb "the political decision has remained slow and because of this valuable development opportunities have been squandered by the Maghreb Union, as well as opportunities for building an integrated economic system ".
According to the Emirati newspaper, the first ten months of 2018 brought nothing new to the Maghreb joint action, "but the five Maghreb countries have experienced many political, economic and security interactions" and "the challenges that have begun to appear may have played a role in reviving collective thinking to revive the Union and overcome conflicts, particularly between Algeria and Morocco, which caused the freezing of the activity of the regional Organization ".
The daily added that "strong voices have risen to claim the need that the two countries must overcome their perpetual conflict around the Sahara," explaining that the two countries represent between them, "the strategic weight of the Union.
Without this entity nothing can be achieved, it is for this reason that the conflict must not hinder the unity of destiny and possibility of cooperation between the two in many fields which would bring an important benefit for the two people and the other fraternal peoples ".
"Al Khalije" notes that the reports by the General Secretariat of the Maghreb Union as well as the Economic Commission of the African Union indicate that the economies of the 5 Maghreb countries "suffer dry losses because of non-integration, which vary between 3 and 5% of the gross domestic product of these countries, that is to say almost 10 billion dollars a year, besides the fact that the forecasts say huge profits ".
These reports consider that the Maghreb region is "the lowest on the African continent for trade within the regional area, with only 2% of trade with the outside", while the African average is 16% with forecasts that can reach 60% in 2022, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Africa.
-News on Western Sahara issue/ Corcas-
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