JEDDAH, 8 September 2007 — Secretary-General of the Supreme Commission for Tourism Prince Sultan ibn Salman inaugurated in Paris a photo exhibition to promote the ancient Nabataen city of Madain Saleh, which Saudi Arabia officially nominated earlier this year to become the Kingdom’s first United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.
The prince inaugurated the exhibition on Thursday in the presence of UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura and Ziad Al-Darees, Saudi Arabia’s permanent UNESCO representative.
Veronique Dauge, the director of UNESCO’s Arab Unit, confirmed that Saudi Arabia had submitted all requisite documentation to initiate the nomination process of the historical site, a contemporary of Jordan’s Petra.
“The nomination file for Madain Saleh was submitted last January and will be examined by the World Heritage Committee in July 2008,” Dauge said yesterday by e-mail.
Structures still standing at the site, located about 400 km north of Madinah, date back to the second century BC. The city was part of the Nabataean culture that fought wars against King Herod and managed to force the Romans into an allegiance under the Pax Romana until Emperor Trajan annexed Petra to the north in 107 AD.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites will review the nomination at the group’s 32nd session next year. Two other Saudi sites have been short-listed for nomination by the Saudi government: the historical centers of Riyadh and Jeddah.
Dauge told Arab News yesterday that UNESCO has not formally received the requisite documents from the Saudi government. “They have been included in the tentative list but not nominated,” she said.
The annual deadline for submission is Feb. 1, after which it can take at least two to three years for a site to be approved. Sites must meet several criteria to be included on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. Governments seeking this status, which opens the way for international collaboration in preservation efforts, must exhibit efforts on their own to preserve original structures before UNESCO will approve nominations.
Prince Sultan and the UNESCO chief held discussions on the cooperation between SCT and the UNESCO, particularly in the fields of antiquities, legacy and culture on the sidelines of the exhibition.
