Afro-Arab Summit: thirty three years “lost”

By on October 11, 2010

The summit, held in Syrte (Libya), was another opportunity to submit a joint strategy based on Arab and African cooperation proposed to the delegates of the 60 Arab and African states.

It is an action plan, for the period 2011-2016, covering four areas: politics, peace, security and economic cooperation and financial. It is an occasion to see how to boost trade between Arabs and Africans, how to increase investment and develop infrastructure. It is time to translate mutual relations into mutual cooperation in the fields of agriculture, food security and, finally, the socio-cultural cooperation. Other declarations are also expected on some issues such as immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism in particular, but also to address political issues such as the Palestine case. Two countries have tried to include the contentious issue of the recovered Moroccan Saharan provinces, but the Arab League, supported by African states, rejected the idea. We should note also the intervention of the Libyan leader, Muammar Khaddafi who declared that the losses undergone by the Arab countries, during the world financial crisis, would be avoided if these last ones had been invested in Africa. He also declared that “… A great disease, or at the very least a contagion is preparing to hit all of Africa, should the process of partition of Sudan to succeed. It will be a prelude since the end of colonialism that the map of Africa, inherited from colonial borders, will be redrawn. This would be a bad precedent that could spell the division of many other African states.

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