French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Saudi Arabia today for a working visit to the country. He met King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud at the King Khalid International Airport, and was taken to the King’s farm in Janadriya, outside of Riyadh, where Sarkozy will spend the night.
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The President’s main purpose on this visit is to urge Mideast peace talks to continue.
“It is urgent because the current deadlock plays into the hands of extremists and each day the chance of peace is slipping away a little,” Sarkozy told a Saudi newspaper.
At the same time, the King and the President probably also discussed France selling helicopters, naval frigates and high-speed trains to a country looking to increase its development. Civilian nuclear agreements was also on the list.
What might also have been discussed was the possibility of a peace conference in Paris. It is rumored President Sarkozy wants to bring together leaders from the Mideast, Russia, United States, plus the UN and the EU to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sarkozy will be leaving Saudi Arabia tomorrow. He will head to Qatar before going back to France.
On Monday, Qatar’s Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned officially opened the World Innovation Summit for Education, or WISE, which is part of the Qatar Foundation. Over 1,000 international education leaders attended, and as a special envoy to UNESCO, the Sheikha told them her thoughts on the importance of education.
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“Education is a main and decisive factor in ensuring our readiness in facing the major transformations which are shaping our contemporary world. Therefore, the possession of knowledge and its application to the progress of humanity must be at the core of our priorities and at the forefront of our commitments.
“Innovation in education,” Mozah continued. “Which is the focus of this Summit should become an achievable and executable process. It should be at the heart of the education which is the force which exerts human energy and guides it wisely for the purpose of expanding human intelligence and creativity to serve the objective of just and equitable human societies.
“Therefore this Summit requires us to debate deeply and discuss a series of issues at the core of the right to education in order to draft an agreement on which we can build our next steps.”
“I do not make a distinction between powerful and weak, nor between developed and less developed; everybody is responsible and everybody has the duty to raise the level of education,” the Sheikha added.
Also in attendance was the newly appointed UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. In her speech, she praised Sheikha Mozah for her efforts.
“Her Highness has consistently showed commitment to her responsibilities and we had taken actions whenever she alerted us that education was facing problems in several parts of the world.”
