Tunis Hopes Strategic Partnership Deal With Moscow to Be Signed in March

Tunisia and Russia are going to sign the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on mutually benificial partnership and cooperation, by the end of March, Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova — Tunisia intends to sign the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the strategic partnership and cooperation with Russia by the end of March, Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui told Sputnik.

"We are working on that. I hope that agreement will be ready on time. We have agreed between two ministers to intensify political consultations and continue to develop our ties in the strategic manner. We will put all this on paper — in our memorandum of understanding and hopefully it full be ready for signature by the end of this month," the top diplomat said.

The upcoming meeting of the Russian-Tunisian Intergovernmental Commission, where the sides could sign the document, is scheduled for March 29-April 1.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Tunisia is among Russia’s important trading partners in Africa as the volume of bilateral trade turnover between the two countries last year amounted to $827 million.

Last week, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia expected the decisions to be made at the intergovernmental commission's meeting to "significantly improve" the 2015 Russia-Tunisia economic cooperation indicators.