{"id":26953,"date":"2016-07-16T06:40:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T06:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/morocco-seeks-to-rejoin-african-union-after\/"},"modified":"2016-07-16T06:40:05","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T06:40:05","slug":"morocco-seeks-to-rejoin-african-union-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/morocco-seeks-to-rejoin-african-union-after\/","title":{"rendered":"Morocco seeks to rejoin African Union after Western Sahara row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Morocco has sent a special envoy to lobby African leaders to rejoin the African Union 32 years after it left in a row over Western Sahara.}<\/p>\n<p>Taib Fassi Fihri met Kenya&#8217;s President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi and said Morocco wants to re-join the AU without any preconditions.<\/p>\n<p>Morocco claims Western Sahara as part of its territory, much of which it has occupied since 1975.<\/p>\n<p>But the AU recognises Western Sahara as an independent state.<\/p>\n<p>Inside world&#8217;s most remote film festival<\/p>\n<p>Morocco is the only African country not to be an AU member.<\/p>\n<p>The AU, however, says it will continue pushing for the rights of Western Sahara to hold a referendum on its self-determination.<\/p>\n<p>Brahim Ghali, the new leader of the North African territory is expected to attend the African Union summit in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, according to the AU&#8217;s deputy chairperson Erastus Mwencha.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Ghali was elected the Western Sahara president and secretary-general of the independence movement Polisario Front on 9 July.<\/p>\n<p>He replaced long-time leader Mohamed Abdelaziz who died in May.<\/p>\n<p>1975-76: Morocco annexes two-thirds of Western Sahara after colonial power Spain withdraws.<\/p>\n<p>1975-76: Polisario Front declares the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), with a government-in-exile in Algeria. Thousands of Sahrawi refugees flee to western Algeria to set up camps.<\/p>\n<p>1984: Morocco leaves the Organisation of African Unity (which later became the African Union) in protest at the SADR&#8217;s admission to the body.]<\/p>\n<p>1991: UN-monitored ceasefire begins in Western Sahara, but the territory&#8217;s status remains undecided and ceasefire violations are reported. The following decade sees much wrangling over a proposed referendum on the future of the territory but the deadlock is not broken.<\/p>\n<p>March 2016: Morocco threatens to pull its soldiers out of UN global peacekeeping missions in Western Sahara, after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon uses the term &#8220;occupation&#8221; when referring to the territory.<\/p>\n<p>May 2016: Long-time Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz dies aged 68.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13582 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_90396441_sahara.jpg\" alt=\"Thousands of Sahrawis have spent years in refugee camps\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Morocco has sent a special envoy to lobby African leaders to rejoin the African Union 32 years after it left in a row over Western Sahara.} Taib Fassi Fihri met Kenya&#8217;s President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi and said Morocco wants to re-join the AU without any preconditions. Morocco claims Western Sahara as part of its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26953"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26953"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}