Tunisian President Kais Saied met with Nasser Bourita, Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Ramtane Lamamra, Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Tuesday at the presidential palace in Carthage.
The Tunisian Presidency reported that the Moroccan FM visited Tunisia for the transmission of an oral message addressed by King Mohammed VI to the Tunisian Head of State.
During this meeting, the great fraternal ties between the two leaders were mentioned, while the two parties also reaffirmed their common determination to further strengthen bilateral cooperation relations as well as to meet the expectations of the two “brotherly peoples.”
Likewise, it was announced that Algerian FM Ramtane Lamamra visited Kais Saied as the special envoy of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, responsible for transmitting a message addressed to the Tunisian Head of State.
Algerian FM Lamamra made a statement on his social media account that this meeting was an opportunity to reaffirm “the bonds of respect and mutual appreciation uniting the leaders of the two countries,” as well as their determination and their willingness to continue working together to further consolidate “the historical bonds of brotherhood and the solid relations of cooperation and partnership between Tunisia and Algeria,” according to the same source.
The visits come as Tunisian President Kais Saied said that he would use “extraordinary constitutional powers” on the grounds of “preventing the country from being dragged into a civil war” after a meeting with the security bureaucracy and the commanding staff in the evening. In the aftermath of the meeting, the President announced that he dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, suspended the work of the parliament for 30 days, and that he will appoint a new prime minister and subsequently attach the executive to him.
The leader of the Ennahda Movement, Rached Ghannouchi, which is the largest party in the Tunisian Assembly, emphasized that the steps taken by the president constituted a “coup d’etat.”
