GCC split over Moroccan boycott of Africa summit


Issue 1027 - 01 Dec 2016 | 2 minute read

Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) members were left divided over their approach to the 23 November Fourth Arab-African Summit held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was co-president of a process whose last summit he chaired in 2013. But other GCC states, and several other Arab countries, did not show up, in solidarity with Morocco, which boycotted the event because of the presence of a Polisario Front delegation representing the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The long-running dispute over the Western Sahara’s sovereignty, between GCC observer state Morocco and Polisario’s SADR, has split the African Union (AU), which Rabat left in 1984, when the SADR was accepted as a member.

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