The final settlement of the Western Sahara conflict is making no headway because of the Algerian regime blocking any negotiated solution which does not arrange its geo-strategic interests in the sub North-African region. Some Arab researchers settled in the United States have attributed the situation of deadlock in which the thorny Sahara issue finds itself, to Algeria. For Annouar Aboukhars, professor/researcher in international relations at McDaniel College, in the Maryland State, who attributes to the Algerian power, the responsibility of the deadlock in which the negotiations on the settlement of the Western Sahara are trapped, deplores moreover the commercial exchanges between the Maghreb Arab Union countries which he has qualified of being the “weakest” in the world. The efforts aiming at achieving a real commitment in the negotiations to resolve the Sahara issue and the reopening of the Morocco-Algerian frontiers, closed since 1994, have all ended into failure because of this intransigence of Algeria, he has pointed out in this context. Speaking in a conference held in Wednesday at the Brookings Institute headquarters in Washington, on the “Elections and reforms in Morocco and Tunisia”, the Tunisian Nejib Ayachi, President of the Maghreb Center, has stated in the same wake, that any settlement to the Sahara issue remains difficult to reach because of Algiers’ authorities’ unwillingness to collaborate.

The President of this independent organization specialized in North-African affairs has explained that this territorial conflict standing against the emergence of a real Maghrebian regional union, makes the Maghrebian countries lose each year 3 points of their GDP according to the World Bank data. While regretting the absence of a real integration of the Arab Maghreb Union countries, the Tunisian expert explains that such an integration is of a nature to put on the rails this regional grouping, in possession of important complementary natural and human resources. The facts are there, but the political will is still missing especially on the side of the Algerian neighbour tending to make the statu-quo continue, and only the Algerian authorities know them deeply.