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Ali Gutali, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Tunisia to the Russian Federation
I would like to greet all of you and thank RIA Novosti and Mr Konstantin Maksimov
for his kind invitation and for giving me the opportunity to tell you about the situation in Tunisia.
We call it a revolution of freedom and dignity.
This revolution began on December 17, 2010 and successfully ended on January 14, 2011,
when ex-President Ben Ali fled the country.
Since then, we are undergoing the transit period to democracy,
and today we are celebrating the third anniversary of this revolution
– of the Revolution of Freedom and Dignity.
Tunisia’s experience can be a good example of how Arab Islamic culture can adopt modern democratic rights,
including equal rights for men and women.
From the very beginning, our revolution has been supported by our Russian friends.
Russia declared that they firmly support our democratic experience.
It is important to mention that now that Russia is the chair of G8 will,
among others, lead the initiative called the Deauville Partnership
that is related to economic assistance to developing countries, including Tunisia.
And we hope that our Russian friends, thanks to their presidency both in the partnership and in G8,
will keep supporting our revolution and our democratic experience.
As for tourism, our relations are also evolving.
Last year we beat the record of the number of Russian tourists who visited Tunisia:
300 thousand Russians visited Tunisia last year, while in 2011 this number only amounted to 150 thousand.
So it is substantially expanding, you see: from 150 thousand to 300 thousand in one year.
And we do our best for the Russian tourists’ leisure being comprehensive:
we help them get acquainted with the beautiful nature, with cultural and historical monuments,
with the ancient architecture of Tunisia.
Tunisian history is doubtlessly very rich.
Of course, for Russian tourists it is very important
that we have the sun, the sea, and cultural monuments as well.
Besides, we are satisfied to mention the work on preparing the sister city agreement
between Bizerte and St. Petersburg.
I think such an agreement will be signed in March or April,
and the two cities, St Petersburg and Bizerte, will be able to develop bilateral cooperation.
You know that the island of Bizerte is very dear to Russia.
A promenade in Bizerte will be named after Anastasia Shirinskaya,
which is a high assessment of the activities she carried out
for the development of Russian-Tunisian relations.
Unfortunately, this great woman died about two years ago,
but the memory of her is still the symbol of the friendship between Russia and Tunisia.
We hope that a movie on the Bizerte Russian community will be made,
maybe with the participation of Nikita Mikhalkov or some other Russian movie maker.
We wanted it to be a fiction movie that would show the history of Russian-Tunisian relations.
Something like “Titanic” in terms of its importance and influence.