The leaders of Tunisia, Algeria and Libya agreed after a consultative meeting in Tunis to fight together against the impacts of illegal immigration and to unite their positions and their speeches on this issue .
At the invitation of the Tunisian Head of State, Kaïs Saïed, the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and the President of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mohammed Al-Menfi participated on Monday April 22 in a first consultative meeting at the presidential palace in Carthage, in the northern suburbs of Tunis.
At the end of this meeting, “the three leaders agreed to the formation of joint teams (…) which will be responsible for securing the common borders [of the three countries] from the danger and impacts of unorganized immigration”, according to a statement read by Tunisian Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar. In this joint declaration, they also insisted on “uniting positions and discourse” in their treatment of this subject with other “brother and friend” countries concerned by this phenomenon, added the minister.
The three presidents also discussed the importance of periodically organizing consultative meetings not only to discuss political issues but also economic and social issues. Morocco and Mauritania were not invited to this event.
“Need to unify and intensify efforts”
The principle of a tripartite Maghreb meeting, organized every three months, was decided by the three leaders when they met on the sidelines of a gas summit in Algiers at the beginning of March. In a press release, the three countries stressed “the need to unify and intensify efforts to meet economic and security challenges, in the service of the interests” of their people.
Moroccan media, such as Hespress and Le 360, have accused Algeria of wanting to “form a Maghreb alliance against Morocco”, its great regional rival, and denounced a “maneuver intended to make people believe that Algeria is not isolated in its neighborhood.”
For his part, the head of Algerian diplomacy, Ahmed Attaf, defended these initiatives as intended to fill a void, while the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), created thirty-five years ago, is “in the coma.”
The UMA was founded in Marrakech in 1989 with the ambition of strengthening political and economic ties between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and Libya, but recurring tensions between Rabat and Algiers caused a stalemate and the leaders’ latest summit dates back to 1994.