Morocco set to re-join African Union after 32-year absence: Report

A Moroccan diplomatic source has said that his country will re-join the African Union after leaving 32 years ago.

The anonymous source made his comments to Moroccan newspaper Akhbar al-Youm on Wednesday, but refused to comment on whether King Mohammed VI would attend the upcoming AU summit starting this Sunday in Kigali, Rwanda.

The summit, which is the 27th of its kind, is expected to be the venue where Morocco’s decision will be formally announced, according to the source.

Late last month, the chair of the summit, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, visited Rabaat where he received Morocco’s highest state decoration.

King Mohammed’s father, King Hassan II, pulled Morocco out of the AU in 1984 over the union's decision to accept the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as a formal member.

Morocco considers the territory as part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since 1991 after a ceasefire was reached to end a war that broke out when Morocco seized the former Spanish territory in 1975.

The UN chief wants to achieve progress in resolving the 40-year conflict over Western Sahara before he steps down at the end of the year.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar has been on a diplomatic offensive in recent days, according to Huffington Post Arabic, meeting with the presidents of Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Senegal, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and the prime ministers of Libya and Ethiopia to inform them all of Morocco’s decision.

Morocco has special status within the AU and still has access to services available to all AU states, but remains the only African UN member not to be a member of the AU.

For this reason, some have called in recent years for Morocco to be brought back into the fold of the African Union.

“Morocco is a fully-fledged member of the African family, and no-one has the right to exclude the Kingdom from the AU,” Senegalese Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye said during King Mohammed’s visit to Senegal in May 2015. “We think that now is the time for Morocco to return to the African Union.”