Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, together with other GCC leaders, commissioned the first phase of a $1.6 billion power grid project on the sidelines of the GCC summit here on Monday.
The project would reduce the need for new generation capacity in member countries by 5,000 megawatts.
The summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) kicked off with a call for quick solutions to regional problems, notably the incursions into Saudi territory, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which is threatening the region’s security and stability.
The power grid would be completed by 2012, said Yousif Janahi, chairman of the Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA). The project will help GCC states meet rapidly rising power demand and avoid power outages.
In his opening speech, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah strongly condemned the intrusions and provocations against Saudi Arabia, while pledging support to Yemen to ensure peace, security and stability.
“Any attack on Saudi Arabia would be considered an attack on GCC countries,” said the Kuwaiti leader, who presided over the conference.
He also congratulated King Abdullah on the return of Crown Prince Sultan from abroad after a yearlong medical trip.
King Abdullah together with other Gulf heads of state took a round of a historic photo gallery before the inaugural session of the summit. The photo exhibition at Kuwait’s Bayan Palace featured the history of the Gulf during the last 80 years.
On the economic front, Sheikh Sabah said that “the launching of the common GCC power grid project, the approval of a time frame for the GCC monetary union during this summit meeting and the establishment of an apex Gulf railway authority would further speed up the GCC march.”
In his keynote opening address, the emir touched major regional issues including the situations in Iraq and Palestine as well as the Middle East peace process. He voiced GCC’s grave concern over the ongoing violence in the northern Yemeni areas. “The GCC states rejected the infiltrators’ attacks on the Saudi-Yemeni borders and supported the measures taken by Saudi Arabia to defend its territory.”
On the volatile situation in Iraq, the emir called on all factions in Iraq to unify their ranks to ensure peace and stability there. “We look forward to the continuity of political process in Iraq,” said the Kuwaiti emir, while calling international community to shoulder responsibility to solve Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The GCC states urged the international community to pressure Israel for the complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories and stopping the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. On Iran, he said that “the Iranian issue should be solved by dialogue and peaceful means,” while calling on Tehran to comply with international regulations to strengthen regional security and stability.
Other GCC leaders attending the 30th summit are Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Omani Deputy Premier Fahad bin Mahmoud Al-Saeed, who is representing Sultan Qaboos, besides GCC Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah.
Among the key items of the draft communiqué are a time frame for the launching of the GCC monetary union, and another for the launching of the GCC railway authority, a GCC official attending the summit told Arab News.
The monetary pact stipulates the setting up of a monetary council next year in Riyadh. The council will develop into a central bank which will take necessary measures to issue the single currency.
The two-day summit in Kuwait has added importance because of the urgency of the regional problems, said Ahmed Al-Kabi, a spokesman of the GCC General Secretariat.
(Continued on Page 3)The summit, he said, comes as Dubai’s debt woes cast a pall over the region.
Kuwait’s Finance Minister Mustafa Al-Shamali urged his GCC counterparts to work together in order to contain the ongoing fallout from the financial crisis, although he made no explicit reference to Dubai.
“Global economic indicators in the second half of the current year require us to work together to avert any additional consequences of the crisis,” Shamali told a meeting of GCC finance ministers.
The economies of GCC nations, which boast 45 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and a quarter of global gas resources, have been hit hard by the sharp drop in oil revenues after years of major cash flow.
Arab News with input from agencies
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