Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki meets U.S. President Barack Obama, September 23, 2013. Photo credit: Tunisian Presidency’s Facebook page.
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki plans to meet with Iranian President Hasan Rouhani while in the United States for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, according to the Associated Press.
Marzouki called the recently elected Rouhani, who has been perceived as a moderate, a “key player” in the efforts to end the civil war in Syria in an interview with AP.
“I will tell him Iran would be much more respected, accepted, in the Arab world if they put the pressure on their man in Damascus,” Marzouki said.
“Backing Syria means they are losing the whole Arab world,” he said of Iran, whose government has supported Assad.
While in New York, Marzouki met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday. Obama pledged U.S. readiness to help Tunisia in its transition, according to a press release from the Tunisian presidency.
Marzouki, also in the AP’s interview, repeated his offer of asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“If we can avoid more massacres, if we can prevent thousands of Syrian to die, why not?” Marzouki said to AP.
“It’s a terrible, terrible decision, but why not? I am a physician, and life is much more important than anything, even justice,” he said.
Marzouki also commented on the ongoing political crisis in Tunisia in the interview, blaming the assassinations of Chokri Belaid in February and Mohamed Brahmi in July for delays in the country’s transition.
“The whole trouble we have had was because of these political assassinations. If we didn’t have them, I am quite sure that today we would have our constitution, a new government,” he said to the AP.
Commenting on the apparent failure by the Ministry of Interior to act on warnings from the CIA of Brahmi’s murder, Marzouki reportedly said, “some people probably will pay.”
