FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Feb 14, 2011
Source: The Daily Star
Tunisian FM resigns as country faces migrant exodus

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, February 14, 2011


TUNIS: Tunisia’s foreign minister resigned Sunday after just over two weeks in the job as the interim government faced strong pressure from Italy to stem a massive exodus of Tunisians fleeing poverty.
Ahmad Ounaies, who joined the reshuffled interim government formed on Jan. 27 by Prime Minister Mohammad Ghannouchi, quit a day before a visit here by Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top diplomat, a month after the ouster of strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.


Ounaies’ resignation is another blow to the interim government.
The 75-year-old retired diplomat, had barely resumed work since returning from a visit to France on Feb. 4, diplomatic sources said.


He had been heckled by foreign ministry staff on Feb. 7 demonstrating outside and inside the ministry demanding his immediate departure after the Paris visit, as a result of which he took his personal belongings and left.
Many Tunisians were angered when Ounaies said he had always dreamed of meeting his French counterpart, who is accused by opponents in France of being too close to Tunisia’s ousted administration.


Italy meanwhile said Sunday it was planning to deploy its security forces inside Tunisia to stop a wave of immigrant arrivals, as coastguards intercepted another 1,000 immigrants from the North African state.


“I will ask Tunisia’s foreign minister for authorization for our forces to intervene in Tunisia to block the flux,” Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the anti-immigration Northern League party said in a television interview.
“The Tunisian system is collapsing,” said Maroni, speaking ahead of Ounais’s visit expected Thursday.
“I have asked for urgent intervention by the European Union because the Maghreb is exploding,” Maroni added, referring to the North Africa region.

 

“Europe is not doing anything … As usual we’re on our own,” he said.
A total of around 5,000 Tunisian migrants have landed on dozens of small fishing boats in the past five days on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which usually has just 6,000 residents and is struggling to cope.


“It’s out of control,” Lampedusa mayor Bernardino De Rubeis told reporters as boats continued to arrive on the tiny island, which at just 110 kilometers from Tunisian shores is closer to North Africa than to Italy.
A young Tunisian migrant drowned and another was reported missing when a boat carrying 12 people sank Saturday off southeast Tunisia en route to Europe, the official Tunisian TAP agency said.


Italian authorities have begun airlifting many of the undocumented immigrants from Lampedusa to detention centers in Sicily and on mainland Italy, but police estimate that more than 2,000 of them remain on the island.
Hundreds have had to sleep out in the open at the port because of a lack of facilities on the island, while others have been put up in local hotels.


“The situation is very difficult,” said the harbor master, Antonio Morana. He said 977 people had landed so far Sunday and more were coming.
Italy’s cabinet Saturday declared a humanitarian emergency in the area.


A government statement said that the decision to call an official emergency would enable civil protection officers “to take immediate action needed to control this phenomenon and assist citizens who have fled from North Africa.” – AFP

 



 
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