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            Powerful Tunisian Union Calls for Government Dissolution

   by Reuters

   Tunisia's largest labor union called on Tuesday for the dissolution of
   the Islamist-led government, increasing pressure on the moderate
   Ennahda party in the worst political crisis since the country's
   autocratic leader was toppled.

   The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) said a technocrat government
   should replace the one led by Ennahda, which has defied growing calls
   to resign by a secular opposition emboldened by the overthrow of the
   Islamist leader in Egypt.

   The protests against the government in a country that led the first of
   the Arab Spring revolutions grew on Tuesday, when gunmen killed eight
   soldiers near the Algerian border in one of the bloodiest attacks on
   Tunisian troops in decades.

   "The UGTT calls for dissolving the current government and creating a
   technocrat government led by an independent figure," secretary Hussein
   Abbassi said in statement. "We consider this government incapable of
   continuing its work."

   Tunisians fear the return of political chaos just two years after
   autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee during an
   uprising that set off revolts across the Middle East called the Arab
   Spring.

   The UGTT is a powerful force in Tunisia, with around 600,000 members it
   can call on to strike.

   Opposition leaders have been trying to court the group to support its
   calls to oust the government and dissolve the transitional Constituent
   Assembly, tasked with creating a draft constitution.

   Ennahda, which was democratically elected, has remained defiant despite
   increasingly violent and widespread protests. On Monday, one of its
   junior coalition partners, the secular Ettakatol, threatened to resign
   if a new unity government was not formed.

   The opposition, angered by two assassinations in its ranks and
   emboldened by the Egyptian army's ouster of Mohamed Morsi, has taken a
   hard stance in recent days. It is refusing several concessions and
   power sharing proposals offered by Ennahda's governing coalition.

   The UGTT said that while it supported the call for a new government it
   would not back dissolving the Constituent Assembly, which is only weeks
   away from completing a draft constitution to put to popular referendum.

   Opposition critics have argued that dissolving the Assembly and its
   draft constitution would risk even more long term political
   instability.

   "We propose maintaining the Constituent Assembly but ... with a time
   frame to speed up completion of its work," Abbassi said. "We will be
   proposing this to all political parties because there is a need to
   clear the political bottleneck in this country."
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-powerful-tunisian-union-calls-for
   -government-dissolution/1713032.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-powerful-tunisian-union-calls-for-government-dissolution/1713032.html