Zine El Abidine Ben Ali government tried to moderate the views of that organisation. Tunisia, since the early 1990s, called for a "concerted" international effort against terrorism. It was also a key US partner in the effort to fight global terrorism through the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative. Ben Ali mostly retained his predecessor's pro-western foreign policy, though he improved ties with the Arab-Muslim world. He took several initiatives to promote solidarity, dialogue and cooperation among nations. Ben Ali initiated the creation of the United Nations World Solidarity Fund to eradicate poverty and promote social development based on the successful experience of the Tunisian National Solidarity Fund.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali candidates were required to get endorsements from 30 political figures. Given the RCD's near-absolute dominance of the political scene, prospective opposition candidates discovered they couldn't get their nomination papers signed. The subsequent years saw the return of several Bourguiba-era restrictions. For many years, the press had been expected to practice self-censorship, but this increasingly gave way to official censorship. Amendments to the press code allowed the Interior Ministry to review all newspaper and magazine articles before publication. In 1992, the president's older brother Habib Ben Ali was tried in absentia in France for laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking, in