AU to Mull Divisive Morocco Bid to Rejoin Bloc
Local Editor
The African Union will mull a divisive bid by Morocco to rejoin the bloc at a summit next week where stagnating South Sudan peace efforts will also top the agenda.
The AU's 54 member states will gather in Addis Ababa on Monday for a packed two-day meeting in which they will also have to elect a new chairperson -- after failing to do so at a summit six months ago.
Analysts say the election is likely to be complicated by fractures over key issues such as membership of the International Criminal Court [ICC] and whether Morocco should be allowed back in the club.
Morocco quit the bloc 33 years ago in protest at its decision to accept Western Sahara as a member, but announced its intention to rejoin last July. King Mohammed VI has since been crisscrossing the continent lobbying for support.
"Morocco's economic expansion on the continent is important for it... the AU has become more and more relevant so Morocco realizes it cannot drive an agenda on the continent without being in the AU," said Liesl Louw-Vaudran, a consultant with the Institute for Security Studies [ISS] in Addis Ababa.
The membership of affluent Morocco could also be a boon for the AU, which lost a key financer in late Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi and has long sought financial independence. Currently foreign donors account for some 70 percent of its budget, according to the ISS.
However Louw-Vaudran highlights that "it is still not a done deal", with heavyweights such as Algeria and South Africa lobbying hard against the move.
Both have long supported the fight for self-determination by Western Sahara's Polisario independence movement. Morocco maintains that the former Spanish colony which it annexed in 1975, is an integral part of the kingdom.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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