Tunisia: MP rejects invitation for lunch hosted by Madeleine Albright

A Tunisian MP has revealed that he rejected an invitation to lunch with the former State Secretary Madeline Albright to talk about the participation of Tunisian youth in political life, considering the message “an insult.”

“I have been invited to a luncheon hosted by former US State Secretary Mrs Madeleine Albright to talk about the participation of Tunisian youth in political life,” Tunisian MP Yassine Ayari said in a post he published on Wednesday on his Facebook page.

Ayari explained that his talk about his rejection of Albright’s invitation on his Facebook page was that he had been invited as an MP and that the matter does concern not only him but also the Tunisian people.

Ayari justified his rejection of the invitation, saying, “I believe that Mrs Albright has nothing to do with the Tunisian youth’ participation or not in political life. These matters concern the Tunisians alone. Mrs Albright’s intrusion is rejected, and I do not think that if she were an elected senator, she would talk to Tunisian officials about the participation of the American youth in the US political life.”

“As an elected MP, I do not represent myself but represent the Tunisian people. I refuse to be sitting at the same table with a woman who justified the killing of 500,000 Iraqi babies, and I consider her visit Tunisia as unwelcome,” Ayari added.

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The Tunisian MP stressed, “Albright does not have any official status. She does not represent the US government or people, and she only represents herself. I refuse to meet her the same way I refused to meet with Mr George Bush Jr. and Ms Condoleezza Rice in 2011.”

“Next time, when a non-official foreign person asks to meet the minister as an official,” he has “to pass through the foreign ministry services or through the People’s Assembly services to set a date in line with the minister’s commitments if it is worth it,” Ayari explained in a message he conveyed to his country’s foreign minister.

Ayari did not specify the date of the luncheon invitation with Albright, nor did he mention a precise date of Albright’s visit to Tunisia.

Yassine Ayari, who has joined the Tunisian parliament as an MP since February 2018 in the partial elections in Germany, winning against the candidate of Nidaa Tounes Party, is a Tunisian activist, blogger, and a media protection networks engineer.

Ayari is affiliated to the wing biased to the Tunisian revolution and the anti-return of the deep state’s symbolic figures to hold high positions in the country’s political scene, since the 2014 elections.

Madeleine Albright belongs to the Democratic Party. She is the first woman to assume the position of Secretary of State in the United States after being designated by President Bill Clinton on 5 December 1996, to be a Foreign Minister for his second term. She remained in office until 20 January 2001.

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