Jordan Times
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Forum for the Future
opens today
By Khalid Neimat
AMMAN — The “Forum for the Future,” which opens today along the shores of the
Dead Sea, will help reforms efforts at the national level, the government said
on Wednesday.
“There is a national need for reform and Jordan has made a great progress in its
reform attempts in all fields,” Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib told a press
conference yesterday, adding that “such reforms must be driven by internal
conditions and reality.”
The government is holding the third annual Forum for the Future, after Morocco
and Bahrain, since Washington initiated the Broader Middle East and North Africa
(BMENA) initiative at a G-8 summit in 2004.
Foreign ministers from the G-8 group of industrialised nations — Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — as well as
Arab, Muslim and other European countries will attend the forum, Khatib said.
At their Sea Island Summit, the G-8 agreed with BMENA regional leaders on a
“Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Region of the BMENA.”
As a practical framework for the partnership, a plan of support was introduced
setting out a series of initiatives to support political, economic and social
reform in the region.
The partnership is based on universal values including human dignity, freedom,
democracy, rule of law, economic opportunity and social justice, universal
aspirations that are reflected in relevant international documents, such as the
Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Khatib said the two-day forum coincides with intensified diplomatic activities
in Amman, which reflects the Kingdom’s efforts, led by His Majesty King
Abdullah, to focus on solving the region’s problems, with the Palestinian issue
on top, and the situation in Iraq and in Lebanon.
Participants at a conference of civil groups held ahead of the forum, entitled
“Parallel Conference for Civil Society for Forum for the Future,” said the world
community should seek to resolve deadly conflicts in Iraq, the Palestinian
territories and other regional crises before pushing for reform.
Makram Qaysi, head of the Foreign Ministry Protocol Department and the Forum
Preparatory Committee, said that 37 countries would participate in the forum as
well as several governmental and nongovernmental organisations.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa, High Representative for the Common
Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary General of the Council of the European
Union Javier Solana and European Union Commissioner for External Relations
Benita Ferrero-Waldner will also attend.
Forum Spokesperson Ayman Safadi said the meeting will focus on promoting the
participation of civil society institutions and nongovernmental organisations in
the formulation of national reform strategies.
The forum will also tackle the political and security conditions in Palestine,
Iraq and Lebanon, he added.
“Representatives of the Quartet Committee comprising Russia, the US, the EU and
the UN, will not meet during the forum, as the UN Secretary General is not
attending the forum due to other commitments,” Safadi said.