India seeks to firm up ties with Tunisia

India today sought to firm up ties with Tunisia and offered full assistance to electoral processes in the young democracy, including supply of electronic voting machines.
"I take this opportunity to congratulate the government and the people of Tunisia for the successful adoption of the Constitution, in their path towards sustainable democracy," External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said.
Khurshid's three-day visit is the first bilateral visit by an External Affairs Minister to the North African country.
"The fact that my visit to Tunisia happens to be the first bilateral visit by an External Affairs Minister of India to Tunisia demonstrates our support for Tunisia in this important journey," he said in a statement.

"At this important juncture, India wants to be on the right side of history by supporting the democratic institutions being established in Tunisia," Khurshid said, as he embarked on the second leg of his three-nation tour of Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan.
"We are ready to offer our full assistance to the electoral processes, in keeping with the requirements and priorities of Tunisia, through provision of logistic and technical expertise. In particular, we have had successful experience in the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in India and are willing to provide these to Tunisia, as and when required by them," he said.

Khurshid described his meetings with the Tunisian President, Prime Minister, Industry Minister and the President of the ISIE (Tunisia's Election Commission) as "fruitful" and said his talks with his Tunisian counterpart would further firm up ties.

"My visit provided an excellent opportunity to meet with the whole gamut of Tunisian leadership to review a wide range of bilateral, regional and international issues," he said.
During his visit, Khurshid also met top leaders of the Ennahda party and the Nida Tounes party.
Talking about forward movement on the economic front, Khurshid said, "In the trade and investment sector, we would like to diversify the bilateral relationship through increase in exchanges and joint ventures in new areas of pharmaceuticals, auto industry, software, olive oil, tourism and hospitality, as well as textiles."

He noted that Mahindra & Mahindra have established an assembly plant for production of Pickup Trucks at Sousse.
The two countries have set up Joint Working Groups in the key fields of Science & Technology, Information technology, Small and Medium Enterprises, Oil and Natural Gas as well as Pharmaceuticals which are meeting regularly, he said.
Noting that India and Tunisia are long-standing partners in the field of phosphatic fertilizers, he said, "I am happy that our joint venture in phosphates, TIFERT SA worth USD 450 million is functioning well and I look forward to a sustainable production of this plant."

In 2011, a revolution resulted in the overthrow of autocratic Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the first free elections were held. Since then, Tunisia has been consolidating its young democracy.