Jordan Times
Monday, March 8, 2004
Jordan, Israel to lay cornerstone for international science centre
AMMAN (AFP) — Jordan and Israel will lay the cornerstone of an international scientific centre on their border at a ceremony on Tuesday to be attended by officials from both governments, officials said here.
Representatives from US universities Cornell and Stanford, who will help set up the “Bridging the Rift Centre,” will also attend the ceremony at Wadi Araba, where Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, the sources said Sunday.
The research centre, which is expected to open its doors to students from Jordan, Israel and other countries in five years, will be built on 150 acres of land jointly donated by the two neighbours.
It will be located 80 kilometres south of the Dead Sea and is due to include the world's first databank of information about all living systems.
Cornell in New York State and Stanford in California will be offering doctoral degrees at the centre.
But a Jordanian anti-Israeli group has warned the government against “dangers posed” by such a project, in a statement released Sunday.
The statement was signed by the Higher Executive Committee for the Nation's Protection and Resistance to Normalisation — which represents opposition parties, including Islamists and trade unions.