Tunisia Hosts Trilateral Maghreb Summit, Excluding Morocco and Mauritania

This meeting is the first of the "Maghreb tripartite meetings" agreed in March by the presidents Abdelmadjid Tebboune of Algeria, Kais Saied of Tunisia and Mohamed Menfi of Libya, during a summit held in Algiers, announced the Tunisian presidency in a statement published on Facebook.

Neither Morocco nor Mauritania have been invited to this Maghreb summit, scheduled for Monday in Tunisia, reports Europa Press, recalling that the Algerian, Tunisian and Libyan leaders had stressed in Algiers "the need to unify and intensify efforts to meet economic and security challenges, in the service of the interests" of their peoples.

The announcement of the holding of this first "tripartite meeting" of the Maghreb without Morocco has sparked the anger of some media close to the Moroccan government, who see this initiative as an attempt to form a "Maghreb alliance" against the kingdom.

For the record, Morocco and Mauritania form, with Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), a regional organization that only exists in name. Its last assembly dates back to 1994.