Tunisian Islamists want national unity government

PARIS: Tunisia's main Islamist party called Monday for a national unity government bringing together all political groups except that of deposed strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's former ruling party.

The Ennahdha party of exiled opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi was banned under Ben Ali's autocratic rule, but the moderate Islamist leader has said he will return home after the former president fled the country last week.

In a statement received by a foreign news agency in Paris, the party said the unity government should set up a "constituent assembly" to draft a new constitution to govern the country under an "inclusive and democratic parliamentary regime".

Several other exiled political movements have called for a constituent assembly to review the constitution, judging the two-month timetable for fresh elections too short to allow them to properly organise their return.

Ghannouchi fled Tunisia in 1989 and has been living in exile, latterly in London, having been sentenced to life in prison in absentia in 1991 as Ben Ali dismantled his Islamist political movement.

Ennahdha describes itself as a moderate Islamist movement, similar in outlook to Turkey's ruling AKP, which tries to combine respect for certain religious values with democratic electoral politics.