TUNIS: The party of Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki could pull out from the coalition government amid tensions with the ruling Islamist Ennahda party, the secretary general of the CPR warned yesterday. “The Congress for the Republic will quit the government if its proposals and those of President Moncef Marzouki are not taken into account,” the party’s secretary general Mohamed Abbou told reporters. Marzouki, a veteran human rights activist with Tunisia’s centre-left CPR party, last month said the Islamist-led coalition government was not meeting the expectations of its people and called for a cabinet reshuffle. The president warned that Tunisia was at a crossroads between “the road to ruin and the road to recovery” as unrest and strikes gripped the country, two years after the revolution that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Iran seizes 11 tonnes of drugs
TEHRAN: Iran’s border patrol police said it had seized more than 11 tonnes of drugs, killing one smuggler, in the “biggest” bust since the 1979 Islamic revolution, media reported yesterday. “The biggest drug load busted since the revolution, weighing 11 tonnes, has been seized in Jakigour area in Sistan-Baluchestan,” bordering Pakistan, border police chief Brigadier General Hossein Zolfaqari said. The general, quoted in the media, said “one of the drug traffickers was killed and a number of others wounded but managed to escape to the other side of the border,” without elaborating.
Pakistani beheaded in Saudi for murder
RIYADH: Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani in the holy city of Makkah for stabbing to death a compatriot, the interior ministry said. Altaf Hussein Hati was found guilty of stabbing a man in the throat and leaving him to bleed to death, the ministry said in a statement. His beheading brings to 74 the number of people executed so far this year in the kingdom, where 79 were put to death in 2011. Agencies
