Tunisia in 1993Article Free Pass
A republic of North Africa, Tunisia lies on the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 164,150 sq km (63,378 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 8,530,000. Cap.: Tunis. Monetary unit: Tunisian dinar, with (Oct. 4, 1993) a free rate of 1.01 dinars to U.S. $1 (1.53 dinars = £ 1 sterling). President in 1993, Gen. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali; prime minister, Hamed Karoui.
Tunisian political life throughout 1993 continued to be bedeviled by the problem of political representation. At the end of the preceding year, on December 6, Pres. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had called a meeting of leaders in the Constitutional Democratic Assembly (RCD), which was effectively Tunisia’s single political party and controlled all seats in the Chamber of Deputies, in order to try to create a basis for multiparty democracy. The meeting discussed reforms of the RCD to be presented for approval at the movement’s second congress in July 1993. That congress, held July 29-31, heard calls for the five legal opposition parties to be allowed to participate in the National Assembly and for the adoption of a new electoral law. The legislative elections were scheduled for March 1994, and in November President Ben Ali said that the legal opposition would be allowed to sit in the parliament. Presidential elections would also take place in March 1994, and at the RCD’s July congress Ben Ali was nominated again as the RCD’s candidate.
Tunisia’s opposition to Islamists was echoed in foreign affairs when in late June, just before an Organization of African Unity conference in Cairo, President Ben Ali met with his Egyptian and Algerian counterparts to organize resistance to the regional spread of Islamist movements. The meeting condemned the role of The Sudan in the spread of those movements. In an ironic counterpart to that meeting, the British government granted the major Tunisian Islamist leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, political asylum in midyear, despite Tunisian protests.
Tunisia also tried to repair its links with the Persian Gulf states, damaged in 1990-91 over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahia made the first formal visit by a senior Tunisian minister to Kuwait since the 1990-91 crisis in the hope of reviving Kuwaiti investment interest in Tunisia. In a final legacy of the Gulf war, Tunisia continued to hold aircraft on behalf of Iraq. As a result of the agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in September, the Tunisian government held discussions with PLO officials over the future status of the organization in Tunisia, where it had been based since being expelled from Lebanon in 1982-83.
The Tunisian economy continued to improve throughout the year. The growth rate of the gross domestic product, which reached 8.4% in 1992, was expected to be maintained, despite low levels of foreign investment and continuing current account deficits.
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