French Foreign Minister in Tunisia on Thursday
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine on Thursday and Friday will visit Tunisia where France had always played an important role in the Arab Maghreb region.
Together with his Tunisian counterpart, Saeed Bin Mustafa, Vedrine will preside over the periodical meeting of the two countries' joint cooperation committee and discuss means of reactivating relations in economic, cultural and scientific areas.
Tunisian sources expected that meetings of the 16th session of the two countries ' joint committee will give a strong impetus to bilateral relations, which had witnessed a recession under the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.
The Tunisian sources stated that plans for cooperation between the two countries will cover means of strengthening French financial support to the Tunisian economy in order to help it withstand the consequences of implementing the partnership association agreement signed by Tunisia and the European Union in 1995.
The Tunisian sources also expected that talks will cover means of boosting bilateral cooperation in media and cultural fields within the context of attempts to preserve the remarkable position of the French language and protecting it against the dissemination of other foreign languages in Tunisia, namely the English, German, Italian and Spanish languages in Tunisian secondary schools.
For its part, French sources said that Vedrine's talks with high-ranking Tunisian officials will deal with regional and international issues of mutual concern, foremost being the Lockerbie issue in which Tunisia and France are taking part in supporting the efforts to settle it peacefully, as both France and Tunisia have strong relations with the two conflicting sides: Libya, on the one hand, and the US and Britain, on the other.
The French sources added that talks between the two foreign ministers will deal with the stumbled Middle East peace process and the dispute between the UN and Iraq, noting that a great portion of the talks between Vedrine and the Tunisians will be on means of finding an outlet to alleviate the sufferings of the Iraqi people as a result of UN sanctions and then to abrogate these sanctions.