[citation needed] Muammar Gaddafi was a well-known proponent of this ideology and had thus worked to achieve union with several Arab states such as Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Tunisia.

[4] Close Libyan-Egyptian ties troubled Maghrebi leaders who feared the proximity of Egypt on their eastern borders and thus worked to pull Libya away from Egyptian influence.

[5] At the fourth annual Non-Aligned Movement conference in Algiers, Bourguiba called for the unification of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya to form a "United States of North Africa", a move which he qualified by proposing it take place in stages over an "unspecified period of time".

[citation needed] The spontaneous tactic in trying to gain unity with another state on the part of Gaddafi displays a different approach than the previous union attempt with Egypt, where long negotiations did not work out.

[10] The union agreement was a surprise to observers, as it had been thought that Bourguiba did not support the idea, in part due to tensions brought about by the speech by Gaddafi in Tunis in December 1972.

[11] As Tunisia suffered from a labour surplus, a foreign debt of one billion and a lack of natural resources, a closer economic union with the resource-rich but labour-poor Libya would have been an attractive alternative.

[15] Thus, as the Tunisian Socialist Destourian Party (PSD) resisted the union plans due to their view that the arrangement was not clear enough and did not include how political institutions would be structured, Bourguiba rescinded his decision to form the Arab Islamic Republic.

[18] Bechir Ben Yahmed, a Tunisian journalist noted, "For me, he [Bourguiba] died in January, 1974, in Djerba, when during several minutes of face-to-face with Gaddafi, he signed, on hotel stationary, that famous charter of union.

[citation needed] As understood by Bourguiba, the states themselves would not dissipate, but rather their borders would become "cooperatively permeable" through "functional integration",[20] in a similar manner to the contemporary Arab Maghreb Union, formed over a decade later.