RIYADH, 11 May 2006 — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal will lead the Kingdom’s delegation to the GCC-EU dialogue to be held in Brussels on Monday. This was revealed to Arab News by Bernard Savage, European Commission ambassador to Saudi Arabia, on the occasion of the anniversary of Europe Day, which was celebrated here on Tuesday. The event marks the anniversary of Robert Schuman, then foreign minister of France, whose speech in Paris in 1950 paved the way for the establishment of the European Union.
Savage said the GCC-EU dialogue would focus on Iran’s controversial nuclear enrichment program, the situation in Iraq and Palestine, the impact of escalating oil prices on the international economy, and a review of the overall security situation in the Middle East.
He announced that the head of higher education in the European Commission would be visiting the Kingdom later this year as part of efforts to promote educational exchanges between the Gulf Cooperation Council member states and the EU. The objective of the visit is to explore the possibility of an academic exchange program for postgraduate students. The ambassador pointed out that such a program could be undertaken under the umbrella of the Erasmus Mundus Program that aims at improving the quality of higher education in Europe and also intercultural understanding with third countries.
The groundwork for the educational-exchange initiative was laid out in a report titled “The EU and the GCC: A New Partnership,” which was first published in 2002 by the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and the German-based Bertelsmann Foundation.
“The new EU-GCC Partnership should attribute the greatest importance to cooperation in the field of education,” says the report. “This is in many ways more urgently needed than cooperation in trade, finance or energy. The very high priority attributed to cooperation in education should be made into the distinguishing feature of the new EU-GCC partnership, and generous financial means should be made available to substantiate it.”
The ambassador said the EU was in favor of a negotiated settlement on Iran, although there is a lingering suspicion regarding the country’s nuclear fuel enrichment program, which as it stands doesn’t rule out the possibility that Iran is enriching weapons-grade uranium alongside its efforts to develop nuclear energy for its people.
