GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Well-heeled Syrians had already been coming to this ancient industrial city, drawn here by Louis Vuitton purses and storefront signs in Arabic. But local shop owners say Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla to Gaza in May has solidified an already blossoming friendship between Syria and Turkey, the new hero of the Muslim world.

“People in Syria love Turkey because the country supports the Arab world, and they are fellow Muslims,” Zakria Shavek, 37, a driver for a Syrian transport company based in Gaziantep, said as he deposited a family of newly arrived shoppers from Aleppo, which competes with Damascus for the title of Syria’s largest city and is about a two-hour drive from here. “Our enemy in the world is Israel, so we also like Turkey because our enemy’s enemy is our friend.”

The monthly pilgrimages of tens of thousands of Syrians to this southeastern Turkish city — which intensified after the two countries removed visa requirements last September — are just the latest manifestation of the growing ties between Turkey and Syria, part of the Turkish government’s efforts to reach out to its neighbors by using economic and cultural links to help it become a regional leader.

Turkey’s shift toward the Muslim world — from the recent clash with Israel to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s description of Iran’s nuclear program as peaceful — has prompted concerns in the United States and Europe that Turkey, an important NATO ally, is turning its back on the West.

But in Turkey, where 70 percent of all exports go to Europe, businesspeople insist that the government’s policy of cultivating friendly ties with all neighbors reflects a canny and very Western capitalist impulse to offset dependence on stagnating European markets while cementing Turkey’s position as a vital economic and political bridge between east and west.

Indeed, most Arab states, including Syria, enthusiastically support Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, viewing Turkey as a vital intermediary to Western markets that might otherwise be off limits. At the political level, Turkey’s influence in the Middle East is also deeply enhanced by its strong Western ties — a fact recognized by Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, who shocked many in the Turkish capital this month by warning that the latest crisis between Israel and Turkey could undermine Ankara’s role as a mediator in the region.

The tax-free DIFC financial zone, which has its own laws modelled on western regulations, would find it easier to set up a new bourse than other jurisdictions, said Mr Saidi.

“But we don’t want it to be restricted to the DIFC, we think all countries in the region would benefit from such a market,” he said.

A second-tier market would remove some of the financial and regulatory barriers to listing that put off some smaller companies from initial public offerings on local markets, where companies have to float 55 per cent of their shares at a price dictated by the authorities, rather than via a book-building process.

Mr Saidi said there are many companies based in the “free zones” of Dubai – government-run business parks that allow foreigners to hold 100 per cent stakes in their businesses – that would want to use the new exchange to engineer a financial exit from their businesses.

Many of these foreign-owned businesses, spanning sectors such as logistics, technology and media, have also faced challenges in raising capital in the downturn as bank credit has tightened up.

Amid Dubai’s economic downturn, the government is focusing on developing small- and medium-sized enterprises. Dubai is mulling the introduction of special visas for entrepreneurs and new regulations to make it easier for small businesses to be set up. The UAE is also working on insolvency laws to allow more orderly winding up of companies.

The plan for a new sub-market comes amid broader exchanges consolidation in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates.

DIFC-based NasdaqDubai and Dubai Financial Market, the government-controlled domestic bourse, have linked their trading platforms in a bid to encourage DFM retail investors to inject liquidity into NasdaqDubai, the listing home to global ports operator DP World.

Officials are also working on a merger between the stock exchanges of Dubai and Abu Dhabi to create a deeper, pan-UAE market, which would likely become more attractive to foreign funds.

Conversely, the perception in Washington is that Ankara is becoming a volatile and unreliable partner. Some in Congress view the breakdown of relations with Israel as proof of an eastward tilt by an authoritarian Islamist government. US officials, usually careful to keep differences behind closed doors, are expressing doubts. Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state and one of Turkey’s strongest supporters in the state department, says the country’s commitment to Nato, the EU and the US “needs to be demonstrated”.

Arab states try to fill scientific shortfall

By James Drummond and Robin Wigglesworth


In 2004, the UN Arab Development Report characterised Arab universities as “either buried in dust or smothered by ideologies”. A Unesco report in 2005 identified the region as “the least research-and-development-intensive area in the world”.

But Gulf states in particular are now expending huge amounts of petrodollars on education, in an attempt to catch up with the developed world and train nationals for more diversified, non-hydrocarbon economies in the future.

“The Arab world used to be a prime place for science, research and technology, but in the past couple of centuries it has deteriorated a lot, due to politics and ignorance. Things finally look like they are getting better now,” says Wael al-Delaimy, an associate professor of medicine at University of California, San Diego.

Abu Dhabi, for example, intends to pump Dh4.9bn ($1.3bn) into research and development by 2018 under a strategic plan for higher education announced last month. The emirate’s plan calls for 28 per cent of its graduates to be in engineering-related areas. But currently only about 9 per cent of higher education students are in those fields, says the Abu Dhabi Education Council.

Institutions such as the Qatar Foundation, home to branches of six US universities, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, and the Sorbonne and New York university branches being established in Abu Dhabi, are trying to fill the shortfall. Most are teaching establishments for undergraduates. But the intention is that, with time, they will conduct research and award doctorates. ....
Not all has gone well. This month John Perkins, the provost of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute, said he was leaving for “personal reasons”. The Masdar Institute has been formed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aims to carry out research in renewable technologies. ....

“They [the universities] are slowly beginning to realise that money cannot buy people, especially scientists,” says Hilal Lashuel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. “The lack of equal treatment is a major problem. Hiring and pay is based on nationality and not merit, and Arab scientists are often disadvantaged when it comes to both.”

In Dubai, Tarik Yousef, the dean of the Dubai School of Government, a think tank, agrees that a research culture cannot be developed remotely or by one and two-week visits. ....  “I don’t think they [the universities] are going about it the right way. Who are they using to recruit people? [They use] this executive approach,” Mr Yousef says. Some universities are losing as many people each year as they recruit, he says. ....

“Academics want time for research – and they want to be rewarded . . . It has to be a two-way conversation,” he says. “The first question people ask me is: what is my teaching load? How much administrative work am I going to have to do? Am I going to be able to organise seminars and attend conferences and deliver papers?”

Another issue is citizenship. Gulf states have historically granted citizenship grudgingly if at all. In a globalised business such as academia where people prefer not to move frequently, the prospect of working for decades in a country and then being denied the right to stay there is unattractive.

States that offer a route to citizenship are more appealing, academics say. To this end, Mr Yousef says Qatar and Bahrain are offering passports to talented academics to entice them. ....

Gas field threatens fresh Lebanon-Israel dispute

By Ferry Biedermann in Beirut

 

Trouble is brewing in the waters off the coast of Lebanon and Israel about the future of one of the largest discoveries of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean.

A field known as Leviathan might contain 16 trillion cubic feet of gas – enough to serve Israel’s domestic needs and make the country a substantial exporter.

BSkyB is in talks about launching a Sky News-branded 24-hour Arabic language service in conjunction with an Abu Dhabi-based private investor.

It would compete with the Qatar-based al-Jazeera and other Arabic language news services in the Middle East and North Africa.

Sky said that the channel will launch within the next two years if the discussions are successful.

The new channel, which would be a 50/50 joint venture between the two parties, will be based in Abu Dhabi and have bureaux "in most major regional and international news centres".

It would be broadcast free-to-air across the Middle East and North Africa regions offering, according to Sky News, "independent and neutral coverage of the news agenda".

"The Middle East is undergoing rapid economic and social development and is becoming an increasingly attractive region for media investment," said John Ryley, head of Sky News. "This venture would build on our existing strengths as an international news provider and bring the Sky News brand to a new audience. Discussions are progressing well and we look forward to bringing a new approach to Arabic-language news."

IMF: Tunisian President Ben Ali's program strengthening financial system
Friday, 16 July 2010 13:22
Tunisia_Bourse
Tunisia (Tunis) - Global Arab Network has received the International Monetary report on Tunisia. According to this report, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s program includes as an objective the strengthening of the financial system . The program focuses on four major themes (consolidation of the fundamentals, increasing banks’ presence in the economy and improving banking services, restructuring the banking system, and promoting the presence of Tunisian banks abroad).

The law opens to punishment any Tunisian who contacts foreign parties with the aim of harming the country’s “economic security”. It seems aimed particularly at local human rights activists who lobby for more pressure on their government from the European Union, Tunisia’s foremost trade and investment partner

However, last week, Octavia Nasr was fired not for Ajami like views but for her expression of respect to Fadlallah after the cleric passed away.

Consequences of this act:

1) Erosion of freedom of speech in the US for some journalists who will chose to shut up due to fear for their carreer.

2) Erosion of freedom of speech for many Arab Americans whose atavic self-censorship, bred by decades of dictatorship, will be awakened.

3) Help the case of those who claim Jooz control US media.

The idea of a wholly renewable electricity supply, using a system that spans Europe and North Africa, is gaining ground.

There is scepticism, of course, about the variability of wind and solar power, and the cost of deploying the infrastructure. But several studies in the past year have shown how a good geographic blend of sources might make this possible, and perhaps even cost-neutral – and replicable around the world. Big energy equipment vendors are forming consortiums around both the Europe-African super-grid and ‘Desertec’, the idea of a massive solar project in the Sahara desert.

French lawmakers approve ban on full veil


France’s National Assembly on Tuesday backed by a crushing majority a bill banning the wearing of the full face veil in public spaces, a garment which politicians across the political spectrum regard as a symbol of religious extremism.

The vote – by 335 to 1 – takes France a step closer to becoming the first democracy to ban women in the street from wearing the niqab or burka. The Belgian parliament is planning a similar clampdown while Spain is proposing to curb the full veil’s use in public buildings.


The bill will now pass to the Senate in September where it is likely to meet little resistance. However, even once enshrined in law it is almost certain to face an eventual legal challenge on the grounds that there is no constitutional basis for an outright ban in public spaces.

....
The vote is testament to the political consensus in France against the full veil even though it is a marginal phenomenon – only 2,000 women out of a Muslim population of some 5m are thought to wear it.

....

However, some Muslim community leaders suspect a ban may simply stigmatise all Muslims.

.... the differences between government and opposition on the issue of a “burka ban” are small: the socialists want a ban only in public buildings and services, rather than an outright ban, which they fear could prove unlawful.

France’s Conseil d’Etat, a body that advises on the constitutionality of laws, warned the government earlier this year that “no uncontestable legal basis can be found for an outright and generalised ban on the wearing of the full veil”.

The bill does not specifically ban the face veil but prohibits anyone from wearing an item of clothing to hide his or her face in open spaces, including streets, shops, parks or cafés as well as in public services such as town halls, schools and hospitals. Offenders face a fine of €150 ($191).

Militant Islamists from Somalia on Monday claimed responsibility for a series of bomb blasts that killed at least 74 people as they watched the World Cup final in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

The co-ordinated terrorist attacks on Sunday night were among the worst to have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. They targeted an Ethiopian restaurant popular with expatriates, and a rugby club packed with football fans watching the final moments of Holland versus Spain.
 
Hospitals in Kampala were overwhelmed on Monday with the wounded, as Ugandans reacted with shock and fear to the attack on their usually peaceful capital.

“This shows you the criminality and terrorism that I have been talking about,” Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, said at the site of one of the attacks. “If you want to fight, go and look for soldiers, don’t bomb people watching football.”

Ugandan authorities suspected Somali involvement in the killings, but by Monday afternoon, when spokesmen for the al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabaab militia claimed responsibility, little firm evidence had emerged. ...

“We will carry out attacks against our enemy wherever they are,” Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, an al-Shabaab spokesman in Mogadishu, told the Associated Press news agency, claiming responsibility for the explosions. “No one will deter us from performing our Islamic duty.”

-- In Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, completion of procedures by foreign companies consumes twice the time required by domestic companies.