October 20, 2002	Sunday	Sha'aban 13, 1423

TUNIS, Oct 19: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Horst Koehler on Saturday urged Maghreb leaders to step up the integration of their economies to shore up free market reforms and spur more growth.

Tunisia, and its neighbours (Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania), would greatly benefit from increased economic integration with the Maghreb which constitutes a large and largely untapped market, said Koehler.

He was speaking at a news conference in Tunis, the third stop in his eigth-day-tour the region.

Koehler praised the progress of free market oriented reforms in the region, which needs the area’s integration as a vehicle to further economic liberalisation and trade.

I would continue...to give my advice that the leaders of the region, and I include Mr Gaddafi (of Libya) in this, should sit together and define a policy for better cooperation to promote growth and job creation for their people, he said.

Koehler visited Mauritania, Algeria and Tunisia and said he would visit Morocco “in the next week or month.”. He did not say when or, if he would also visit Libya.

He said the countries in the had made progress at reforms at different speeds, singling Tunisia as well advanced.

But Koehler called on the leaders of the region to take together a bold path of reforms and integration to benefit from the Maghreb’s huge human and natural resources.

The five countries set up the Maghreb Arab Union in 1989 with the ambitious goal of turning the region into a free trade zone with a common foreign policy.

But regional rivalry and the Western Sahara conflict, which poisons ties between Algeria and Morocco, is crippling the union and dampening enthusiasm about integration.

I’m uneasy that I detected that not everywhere in the Maghreb is there this awarness that (it is) through regional trade and integration that they can help themselves better, he said.—Reuters