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.