From the CABLE:

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned Tuesday when his own party refused to endorse his government, and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) just happened to be in Tunis to witness the startling developments.

Corker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Tunis Tuesday finishing up his latest tour of North Africa and the wider Sahel region, which also included stops in Senegal, Mali, and Algeria. At noon, he met with Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki. At about 4 p.m., Jebali resigned. Corker spoke with The Cable from Tunis Tuesday evening at the end of what turned out to be a very long and eventful day.

“The issue is that the prime minister wanted to have a technocratic government, a transitional government until they have an election, hopefully this fall. The biggest issue is who is the minister of the interior, which controls security, the policy, and intelligence,” Corker explained. “At the end of the day, [Jebali's party] Ennahda and [another ruling coalition party] CPR, they did not want to go along with it. They wanted political leaders in these positions.”

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