Tunisia: Promotion of the rights of Arab women is 'central issue'

Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali reiterated his support for the promotion of the rights of women in the Arab world as ''a central issue in the process of development and modernization''. Speaking on the occasion of Tunisia's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Personal Status Code, which granted Tunisian women their rights, President Ben Ali said, ''the various contemporaneous world changes show that a society's attainment of progress and invulnerability depends on the freedom and rights women enjoy in that society, and on the duties and responsibilities they assume therein.''