Tunisia wants to strengthen bilateral cooperation and cement trade link with China to harness business opportunities existing in both countries, the official TAP news agency reported on Wednesday.

"Tunisia has a great interest to improve relations with China. We recorded a strong level of bilateral relations through a continuous coordination between both countries on issues of common concern," Abdel Wahab Abdallah, Minister of Tunisia's Foreign Affairs, was quoted by TAP as saying.

Abdallah made the remarks during meeting with Zhai Jun, China's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who is in Tunisia to attend a conference of China's ambassadors in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the report.

"Private sector has a great role to further bolster cooperation in different sectors due to partnership projects in order to satisfy the interest of the two partners," the Tunisian minister added.

Tunisia and China have signed 23 agreements on economic, technical, diplomatic, scientific and financial sectors in a move to cement economic links with their first trade agreement dating back to l995, according to government data.

China is one of the important Asian partners of Tunisia. The overall volume of trade between the two countries rose to 1.2 billion Tunisian dinars (947 million U.S. dollars) last year from 210 million dinars in 2001, official figures showed.

Besides, the north African country is eyeing Chinese market, which is expected to provide more than 100 million tourists worldwide next year. (1 USD = 1.267 Tunisian dinar)