SUPER_MAROC
22-01-2007, 18:58
Internationale conferentie wederopbouw Libanon[/SIZE]
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Donderdag start in Parijs een internationale conferentie over de wederopbouw van Libanon. Onder anderen Jacques Chirac, Condoleezza Rice, Ban ki Moon en Fouad Siniora zijn aanwezig.
[video]mms://video.france24.com.edgestreams.net/EN%20NW%20PKG%20LEBANON%20FRANCE%202_400.wmv[/video]
Bron France 24[/SIZE][/FONT]
Citaat:
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Donderdag start in Parijs een internationale conferentie over de wederopbouw van Libanon. Onder anderen Jacques Chirac, Condoleezza Rice, Ban ki Moon en Fouad Siniora zijn aanwezig.
[video]mms://video.france24.com.edgestreams.net/EN%20NW%20PKG%20LEBANON%20FRANCE%202_400.wmv[/video]
Bron France 24[/SIZE][/FONT]
Citaat:
[SIZE="2"][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="4"]Lebanese businesses struggle to recover[/SIZE]
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21, 2007 (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon will set off Tuesday on his first foreign trip since taking office three weeks ago, to attend a Paris conference on Lebanon's reconstruction and an African Union summit centered on Darfur and Somalia.
Ban's first stop Wednesday will be Brussels, where he is to hold separate talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the new president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering.
In the Belgian capital, Ban will also call on King Albert II before conferring with Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht. He may also meet with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Late Wednesday, Ban, a former foreign minister, will travel to Paris to attend a conference Thursday on Lebanon's reconstruction, which will be chaired by French President Jacques Chirac and attended by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.
Some 30 countries, mostly Western and wealthy Arab donors, and delegates from multilateral institutions, are expected to take part in the meeting, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also due to attend.
At the Paris meeting, Siniora will seek forgiveness of part of his country's staggering 41-billion-dollar public debt -- or more than 180 percent of its gross domestic product -- accrued in rebuilding after a 1975-1990 civil war.
He will also press for long-term aid to help Lebanon recover from Israel's 34-day conflict last year with Hezbollah guerrillas, which caused more than 3.5 billion dollars in damage.
A senior UN official, who requested anonymity, noted that at a previous Paris donors' conference in November 2002, 4.4 billion dollars were pledged for Lebanon in the form of concessional grants and soft loans.
"Unfortunately, it did not have the impact we all hoped it would have, because of difficulties" in carrying out structural economic reforms, he added.
The official said another key goal of Thursday's conference was "creating a more enabling private-sector environment and ensuring that money pledged is actually delivered." He said the meeting was likely to secure total pledges of at least eight billion dollars.
"I hope you will see the significant money that is pledged actually coming through, ... because donors realize that the dividend will be felt by all of Lebanese society," he noted.
"The secretary general and others will be stressing that this is a conference for all Lebanese, that it is important for all Lebanese to get together, work constructively and get back into dialogue in order to try and reap the dividend and hopefully the shot in the arm that comes from the conference. That is not a foregone conclusion," the UN official said.
Siniora, whose rump Western-backed cabinet was deserted by six pro-Syrian ministers in November, is to outline a reform plan that calls for privatizing the electricity and mobile phone sectors and hiking value-added tax by two percentage points, from 10 percent to 12 percent.
But the opposition, led by the pro-Syrian party Hezbollah, has staged a sit-in protest outside Siniora's offices in Beirut since December 1 in its bid to replace the cabinet with a government in which it would have a minority veto.
Another highlight of Ban's foreign tour will be his attendance at the January 29 AU summit in Addis Ababa, where the Darfur conflict and turmoil in Somalia will dominate the agenda.
UN officials said Ban would speak at the summit and hoped to huddle with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to follow through on his acceptance of a deal to deploy a robust, joint AU-UN force to take over peacekeeping in strife-torn Darfur from cash-strapped AU troops.
Another key topic will be Somalia, where the AU has agreed to deploy nearly 8,000 peacekeepers to "facilitate humanitarian operations and consolidate peace and stability.
The 7,600-strong AU force is to assume a UN mandate which would work toward long-term reconstruction in the country, where the weak transitional federal government in December got Ethiopian military support to oust Islamists from Mogadishu and the south.
On his way to Addis Ababa, Ban is to pay a two-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the UN maintains its largest peacekeeping operation. He is expected to confer with President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa on January 27 before making a brief visit to Kisangani the next day.
After his two-day stay in Addis Ababa, Ban is to travel to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on January 30 to inspect UN facilities and meet Kenyan leaders before heading to Amsterdam.
He is to fly back to New York on February 1, before traveling to Washington to attend the February 2 meeting of the diplomatic Quartet -- the EU, the UN, the United States and Russia -- seeking to re-energize the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21, 2007 (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon will set off Tuesday on his first foreign trip since taking office three weeks ago, to attend a Paris conference on Lebanon's reconstruction and an African Union summit centered on Darfur and Somalia.
Ban's first stop Wednesday will be Brussels, where he is to hold separate talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the new president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering.
In the Belgian capital, Ban will also call on King Albert II before conferring with Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht. He may also meet with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Late Wednesday, Ban, a former foreign minister, will travel to Paris to attend a conference Thursday on Lebanon's reconstruction, which will be chaired by French President Jacques Chirac and attended by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.
Some 30 countries, mostly Western and wealthy Arab donors, and delegates from multilateral institutions, are expected to take part in the meeting, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also due to attend.
At the Paris meeting, Siniora will seek forgiveness of part of his country's staggering 41-billion-dollar public debt -- or more than 180 percent of its gross domestic product -- accrued in rebuilding after a 1975-1990 civil war.
He will also press for long-term aid to help Lebanon recover from Israel's 34-day conflict last year with Hezbollah guerrillas, which caused more than 3.5 billion dollars in damage.
A senior UN official, who requested anonymity, noted that at a previous Paris donors' conference in November 2002, 4.4 billion dollars were pledged for Lebanon in the form of concessional grants and soft loans.
"Unfortunately, it did not have the impact we all hoped it would have, because of difficulties" in carrying out structural economic reforms, he added.
The official said another key goal of Thursday's conference was "creating a more enabling private-sector environment and ensuring that money pledged is actually delivered." He said the meeting was likely to secure total pledges of at least eight billion dollars.
"I hope you will see the significant money that is pledged actually coming through, ... because donors realize that the dividend will be felt by all of Lebanese society," he noted.
"The secretary general and others will be stressing that this is a conference for all Lebanese, that it is important for all Lebanese to get together, work constructively and get back into dialogue in order to try and reap the dividend and hopefully the shot in the arm that comes from the conference. That is not a foregone conclusion," the UN official said.
Siniora, whose rump Western-backed cabinet was deserted by six pro-Syrian ministers in November, is to outline a reform plan that calls for privatizing the electricity and mobile phone sectors and hiking value-added tax by two percentage points, from 10 percent to 12 percent.
But the opposition, led by the pro-Syrian party Hezbollah, has staged a sit-in protest outside Siniora's offices in Beirut since December 1 in its bid to replace the cabinet with a government in which it would have a minority veto.
Another highlight of Ban's foreign tour will be his attendance at the January 29 AU summit in Addis Ababa, where the Darfur conflict and turmoil in Somalia will dominate the agenda.
UN officials said Ban would speak at the summit and hoped to huddle with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to follow through on his acceptance of a deal to deploy a robust, joint AU-UN force to take over peacekeeping in strife-torn Darfur from cash-strapped AU troops.
Another key topic will be Somalia, where the AU has agreed to deploy nearly 8,000 peacekeepers to "facilitate humanitarian operations and consolidate peace and stability.
The 7,600-strong AU force is to assume a UN mandate which would work toward long-term reconstruction in the country, where the weak transitional federal government in December got Ethiopian military support to oust Islamists from Mogadishu and the south.
On his way to Addis Ababa, Ban is to pay a two-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the UN maintains its largest peacekeeping operation. He is expected to confer with President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa on January 27 before making a brief visit to Kisangani the next day.
After his two-day stay in Addis Ababa, Ban is to travel to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on January 30 to inspect UN facilities and meet Kenyan leaders before heading to Amsterdam.
He is to fly back to New York on February 1, before traveling to Washington to attend the February 2 meeting of the diplomatic Quartet -- the EU, the UN, the United States and Russia -- seeking to re-energize the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.