At the G7, Tajani offers reassurances on China and tries to obtain some for Africa

Offer guarantees on the Chinese front while trying to extract them from the North African one. The summary is brutal, but it represents the sense of Antonio Tajani’s mission at the G7 Foreign Affairs meeting in Karuizawa. And it is too early to say whether the operation will bring the desired effects, if it is true that in the final communiqué of the meeting, two spare lines were dedicated to the issue that is most dear to the head of the Farnesina, namely that of Tunisia, which renew essentially the invitation to the Saied government “to quickly launch its economic reform program to reach an agreement with the IMF”. But even that wasn’t obvious. And so, in those ten minutes that were dedicated to the crisis in Tunis in the final meeting, those words of “appreciation of the Italian effort” by the British James Cleverly, are something Tajani must cling to. Moreover, the final round table of foreign ministers took place a few hours after the news, not exactly negligible, of the sudden arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennada, perhaps the main opponent of the Saied regime. If further proof of the escalation of tensions, of the exacerbation of the campaign of repression by the Tunisian autocrat, was needed, the detention of the eighty-one-year-old Ghannouchi, former president of Parliament, and the consequent search of the headquarters of his movement based on moderate Islamism by the police, they even offered it. And it is to this evidence that Tajani referred, in his speech, to reiterate the seriousness of the situation. “The news of Ghannouchi’s arrest, a point of reference for democratic transition and political Islamism, is disturbing news,” he said. And now it will be necessary to understand the results that this move could have in the – not easy – path of stabilization of Tunisia “. Hence the renewed invitation not to let others, above all Russia, gain influence in the region, as in fact also happened in Sudan. Hence the appeal: “We cannot and will not afford to lose Tunisia”.