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The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) is a proposed economic integration of the five North African countries—Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia—which make up the Maghreb, the Arabic term for the western region of the Arab world. Collectively, the Maghreb countries have a gross domestic product of $300 billion, based on mid-1990s figures, which is similar in size to the economies of Argentina and Pakistan. As a whole, however, the Maghreb is quite poor on a per capita basis, as GDP amounts to only $4,000 per each of the region's 80 million persons, a level comparable to that of Lithuania.

The plan for a common market by 2000 was set forth in a treaty of the five...