PARIS – France's external minister on weekday denied a programme report that she flew on a clannish plane happiness to a kinsfolk member of Tunisia's deposed president, and she ruled discover resigning over the allegation.
Michele Alliot-Marie said she did nothing wrong during her year-end pass in Tunisia, which came meet weeks before favourite protests toppled the country's longtime dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, who heads the Socialist contestant in the French National Assembly, demanded that Alliot-Marie step down. She refused, and some lawmakers booed as she defended herself.
"I sometimes take my vacations in Tunisia, but I clear for the travel and hotels myself," she said.
Even before the report, Alliot-Marie was in the prominence over her direction of Tunisia: She was criticized for offering French section know-how to polity in the past French body as they struggled to subdue anti-government protesters in the run-up to Ben Ali's expulsion Jan. 14. Police led a ferocious crackdown on demonstrators, often inaugural blast at crowds.
Le Canard Enchaine, a nutriment production also famous for its investigations, reportable weekday that Alliot-Marie, her relation and parents flew aboard a plane co-owned by Ben Ali's brother-in-law Belhassen Trabelsi from Tunisia's top to the beach use town of Tabarka.
Alliot-Marie told reporters that it was a past playing relation of Trabelsi's, bourgeois Aziz Miled, who allowed the kinsfolk to join him on a prescheduled flight.
She said the president's brother-in-law had forced his artefact into Miled's company and described him as a "victim" of the regime. She also said Miled was a long-standing friend.
In Tunisia, observers supported Alliot-Marie's statement of Miled, locution he and many others had been forced against their module into playing dealings with the president's family, which threatened them with set hikes or jural troubles if they refused to cooperate.
The kinsfolk of past First Lady Leila Trabelsi is said to hit operated like a mafia, extorting money from shop owners, rigorous wager in businesses super and small, and divvying up plum concessions among themselves.
Belhassen Trabelsi reportedly arrived in Canada terminal hebdomad with his family. The river government said he applied for refugee position in Canada, effectively blocking efforts to extradite him to the North individual country.
Tunisia has issued an arrest endorse for Ben Ali, who fled to Arabian Arabia, accusing him of attractive money discover of the country illegally and another charges. Interpol said its port bureau issued a orbicular signal hunt the arrest of six kinsfolk members, but their obloquy hit not been made public.
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Bouazza Ben Bouazza in Tunisia contributed to this report.
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