JORDAN
TIMES
Sunday, October 8, 2000
Italian FM to address conference honouring
King Hussein's legacy of dialogue in region and beyond
AMMAN — A
Euro-Mediterranean conference to honour the memory of His Majesty the late King
Hussein and remember his role as a promoter of dialogue in and beyond the
region is to open here on Tuesday.
Italy's
Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini
is scheduled to fly into the Kingdom on Monday for the occasion, and he is also
widely expected to hold separate talks the following day with His Majesty King
Abdullah, Prime Minister Ali Abul Ragheb
and top officials on the latest bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza and the
deepening crisis in Middle East peace talks.
Italy — the
country which last year put forward the proposal for a series of cultural
activities to commemorate the late King within the Euro-Mediterranean
partnership — intends to take the opportunity provided by the commemorative
conference to “reiterate its political and economic support” to the Kingdom,
Italy's ambassador to Amman, Stefano Jedrkiewicz,
anticipated.
“Emphasis
will be on expressing solidarity for Jordan's positive and stabilising regional
role,” the envoy told the Jordan Times in an interview on Saturday.
The two-day
symposium, financed by the European Commission and organised by the
Naples-based Foundation of the Mediterranean Laboratory (Fondazione
Laboratorio Mediterraneo)
and the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, will start with the presentation of the
Mediterranean Prize for Peace posthumously to King Hussein, while King Abdullah
will be awarded the First Honorary Diploma by the Mediterranean Academy during
the same ceremony.
A speech by
HRH Prince Hassan is expected to open the conference,
entitled `The Role of Cultural Diversity on the Threshold of the New
Millennium,' while HRH Prince Talal, the King's
military secretary, is scheduled to chair the first session, on `Culture and
Politics Together for Peace and Development.'
Together with
Italian speakers and a host of prominent Jordanian officials and scholars, the
conference is expected to gather experts and personalities from Morocco, Turkey
and Spain.
In tandem
with the conference, a concert by the Palermo-based Peace Orchestra is also
scheduled for Tuesday evening at the University of Jordan, also in memory of
King Hussein.
From
Brussels, the EC announced last week that “the conference...takes place in the
framework of the social, cultural and human chapter of the partnership, which
aims to bring closer together the peoples of the Mediterranean and to promote
mutual understanding of their cultures and civilisations. It is in this context
that the Stuttgart Conference [of the foreign ministers of Euro-Mediterranean
countries] in April 1999 decided to pay tribute to King Hussein for his leading
role in the strengthening of peace in the area.”
According to
an Italian embassy statement, the new memorandum of understanding on Italian
aid to Jordan for the period 2000-2002 provided the Kingdom with some $5
million in grants and $80 million in soft loans for development projects in the
water, environmental and health sectors, as well as poverty alleviation,
economic reforms and cultural heritage.
Debt relief measures recently undertaken by Rome included the signing of a rescheduling agreement in February — under which $20.6 million of Jordanian public debt were rescheduled — and a $78 million debt-for-development swap agreement sealed in June.