By Anas Mezwar

RABAT

Tanzania has voiced support for Morocco’s position on the ongoing dispute over the Western Sahara region, according to a joint statement issued by the Tanzanian and Moroccan governments.

The Tuesday statement, which was carried by Morocco’s official press agency, explained that Tanzania’s stance was based on "the principle of reconciliation and the need for a permanent solution" to the decades-old dispute.

Tanzania also expressed its readiness to help implement past UN resolutions on Western Sahara.

According to the statement, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has voiced his country’s support for UN efforts to reach a "just, permanent and viable solution" acceptable to all parties involved.

In late October, Moroccan King Mohammed VI paid a three-day visit to Tanzania -- the second leg of a larger East Africa tour -- during which the two countries signed 22 cooperation agreements.

-Return to fold?

In a related development last month, the African Union (AU) announced that Morocco had officially asked to return to the Pan-African organization after a more than 30-year absence.

In 1984, Morocco withdrew from the AU to protest the organization’s admission of the so-called Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which had been unilaterally declared by the Polisario Front several years earlier.

Since the early 1970s, the Polisario Front, a self-proclaimed national liberation movement, has demanded an independent state in Western Sahara and an end to the Moroccan presence there.

At a July AU summit held in Rwanda, Mohammed VI directed a message to African leaders in which he expressed his country’s willingness to return to the union if the 28 states that attended the summit renounced the SADR’s membership in the union.

On Monday, Mohammed VI reportedly asked Chadian President Idriss Déby -- who currently holds the AU’s rotating presidency -- to bring his offer up with African Union Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and all union member states.

The conflict over Western Sahara -- a territory in southern Morocco -- began in 1975 following the end of the Spanish occupation of the North African region.

In 1976, the Polisario unilaterally declared the establishment of the SADR, which -- although it lacked UN membership -- was formally recognized by a number of countries.

Morocco, however, which continues to claim sovereignty over Western Sahara, has tried hard to convince these countries to withdraw their recognition of the SADR.

In 1984, Morocco withdrew its membership from the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) to protest the OAU’s formal recognition of the Sahrawi Republic.

In 1991, a ceasefire deal was signed between the Polisario Front and Morocco.

While Rabat still insists on its right to the Western Sahara region, in recent years it has proposed a self-rule system under Moroccan sovereignty.

The Polisario, for its part, backed by Algeria, demands that a popular referendum be held in Western Sahara to decide the region’s political fate.