Abbas to visit Tunisia next Thursday

Media sources said that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will visit Tunisia on Thursday after receiving an invitation from the temporary Tunisian Presidency. President Abbas will hold talks with Tunisian President Fouad Mubzea and Prime Minister Al-Baji in addition to a series of meetings with a number of political parties’ leaders who won the Constituent Assembly’s elections. According to a statement issued by the Palestinian embassy in Tunisia, Ambassador Salman Al-Harvi met on Tuesday with the Tunisian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Radwan Nouicer,   Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Khalid Zaytoni, and Diplomatic Advisor to the Tunisian President, Riad Al-Said in order to organise Abbas's visit to Tunisia, the second since ousted President Ben Ali’s fall in January. It is expected that talks will tackle the latest developments in Palestine and efforts by the Palestinian leadership in order to complete the requirements for full membership at the UN. Also expected on the table is handing over late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat’s archive, which the Tunisian authorities have promise to do in April, after efforts to obtain it lasted for four years during the former regime. The archive includes correspondence with President Arafat, leaders of the world and confidential material concerning the Palestinian revolution, its military operations and the nature of its relations with many Arab and international figures and funders. It also covers the time since the Palestinian leadership left Lebanon in 1982 until 1994, when President Arafat went back to Palestine along with Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s leaders, after signing the Oslo agreement and the establishment of the PLO.