According to the Tunisian news website “Kapitalis.com”, the outgoing Secretary General of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the Tunisian Taïeb BACCOUCHE, was not invited to the 31st Arab League Summit, held in Algiers.
“Unprecedented in the history of Arab summits, given that the Arab Maghreb Union is a recognized member of the League of Arab States,” declared a diplomatic source to the Tunisian news website.Mr. BACCOUCHE had expressed his wish to attend the Summit to meet the Maghreb Ministers of Foreign Affairs, but his appeal remained a dead letter.
Reason given by Algiers to justify this attitude is that Mr. BACCOUCHE is no longer SG of the AMU but simply responsible for conducting current affairs until the appointment of a new Secretary General.
According to observers, the banishment of the SG Taïeb BACCOUCHE from the Arab League Summit was pre-orchestrated because of his political positions deemed hostile to the Tunisian regime. T. BACCOUCHE had criticized the political process initiated in Tunisia by the president of the Republic, kais Said.
This banishment of the AMU SG puts Algiers in contradiction with the officially declared slogan during the Summit: rebuilding the Maghreb Union and the reunification of the Arab ranks.