WASHINGTON, 19 March 2005 — The king of Jordan and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel will host the “Petra Conference of Nobel Laureates,” where the world’s greatest minds will be invited to seek solutions to many of the world’s most urgent dilemmas.
Participants at the May 18-19 conference, to be held in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, will include laureates from all of the six Nobel disciplines: Peace, Economics, Literature, Physics, Chemistry and Physiology, and Medicine.
The aim of the forum will serve to “elicit new insights and responses to global challenges,” said King Abdallah and Wiesel at a joint press conference in Washington on Thursday. “We need creative minds to address the issues at hand,” said Abdallah, who was in Washington to meet with President George Bush and other US officials. “How can humanity have so much, achieve so much and yet fail so many?” asked the king.
“These experts will be asked to examine solutions for the current crises of war, poverty, hunger, failing economies, disease, and despair.” “Eleven million children die yearly and more than half of those die from hunger,” said Abdallah. “This is not necessarily due to lack of care, but because our global system needs more tools to address these global challenges. “We owe it to ourselves, to our world and to our legacy to turn the present challenges into future opportunities,” said the Jordanian leader.
Wiesel said the joint efforts of a Muslim king and a Jewish scholar were a sign of hope for the world’s future. “Among the priorities before us, we urgently need to reassess the role of education in our societies, the responsibility of educators, scholars, scientists, industrialists and political leaders. In more and more nations, said Wiesel, “people are plagued by the scourge of fanaticism and hatred.”
“We are facing even more terrible threats of war and terror - living not in global peace, but in global fear.” More than 30 laureates have agreed to attend the conference, said Wiesel. He declined to name them, saying several had yet to confirm. The results of the Petra conference will be presented immediately afterward at the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea in Jordan on May 20-22.
