On Saturday June 21, 2003, a small Jordanian Dead Sea resort was the gathering place for a number of the most influential figures in the world and particularly in Middle East affairs. At noon of that day, King Abdullah II of Jordan was delivering his opening speech to an audience of more than 1,200 people representing the political and business leaders of the region and other important international players. It was the opening ceremony of the Extraordinary Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The WEF was established in the 1970s as “an independent organization that is committed to improving the state of the world [by] embracing new challenges” to promote its core principles of economic and political development, according to its mission statement. Apart from this year’s extraordinary meeting in Jordan, the meetings of the WEF are always held in the Swiss town of Davos, with the exception of last year’s meeting, held in New York in a show of solidarity with Americans after September 11.

The choice of Jordan as the place for the meeting is symbolic of the interest of the international organization and its sponsors in the region. Uniquely located between Iraq, which has just come out of a war and entered a new and still-uncertain era, and Israel and the Occupied Territories, where efforts to put an end to the ongoing war have recently been intensified, Jordan was the perfect place to host a conference titled “Visions for a Shared Future.”

The gathering comes less than two weeks after the neighboring resorts of Sharm El Sheikh and Aqaba witnessed high profile meetings between US President George Bush and Arab and Israeli leaders to draw plans for peace in the Middle East. During that brief interval, acts of violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories have already claimed the lives of more than 50 people on both sides.

Also in the background is the situation in Iraq, where a few hundred miles away from the Dead Sea resort American troops are facing daily hit-and-run attacks in their first colonial experience in the region.

The goal of the conference, as WEF’s senior managing director Jose Maria Figueres told AFP, is to contribute to peace between the Arabs and Israel, and promote democracy and good governance in the region, including Iraq.

With regards to the peace process, much media attention was paid to figures thought to be key to the issue, including Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his co-sponsors of the roadmap (the EU, Russia and the United Nations, who, with the US, are collectively known as the “quartet”), in addition to the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders. A lot of diplomatic effort was exerted during the three-day conference to save the peace initiative, which Kofi Annan described as being “distressed” but not yet “dead.”

However, the conference was scheduled since April, more than a month before the Aqabba and Sharm El Sheikh meetings and subsequent events. It is possible that too much public attention was focused on issues of “high politics,” while in fact the true significance of the conference was that participants dealt with more low profile issues. “It is not surprising that the hot political topics gained most media attention, however the Forum is essentially economic and business oriented in its activities, structure and participants,” said Talaat Abdel Malik, economics professor at the American University in Cairo.

Although political issues such as the peace process are full of economic implications – not least of which is creating a secure environment that would attract foreign investment to the region – it is unlikely, according to observers, that Arab and foreign businessmen and ministers of economy and finance (who together comprise the majority of the conference’s participants) would go there solely to discuss crude political matters. Instead, they are likely to be more interested in discussing economic cooperation in the region, a more sensitive topic.

Although WEF officials publicly stated that this was one of the main issues to be discussed during the conference, Egypt’s official media has avoided highlighting it, as it would be a reminder of the economic summits organized by the WEF in the Middle East in the aftermath of Oslo and up until 1997, when the last conference was convened in Doha. The conferences aimed at speeding up the normalization process between Arabs and Israel by means of economic cooperation. When the peace process came to a halt after Netanyahu took office the summits stopped, and since the outbreak of the Second Intifada it has become a sensitive issue in the Arab world to recall scenes of Israeli businessmen and government officials meeting with their Arab counterparts to discuss methods of mutual cooperation and establishing joint projects.

Wael Khalil, a founding member of the Anti-Globalization Egyptian Group (AGEG) and a rising figure in Egyptian civil society, said that it’s likely that the side talks of the conference in Jordan would be full of attempts to reactivate this process. “I expect that a significant part of the Egyptian business community will not be ready to engage in such a process, but certain sectors will find it beneficial to do business with Israel. It won’t be surprising to hear about initiatives for joint projects soon after the conference ends.”

Soon indeed. On the last day of the conference it was announced that the Jordanian and Israeli ministers of industry signed an agreement to establish more joint industrial areas between the two countries. The products of these areas would be exported to the United States, which would grant them tariff exemptions. Another agreement was also reached between the Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis, with the blessings of US and World Bank representatives, to dig a canal that would connect the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. Moreover, it was agreed that work would start immediately on this project and that its completion would not be tied to any political considerations. (Although probably irrelevant to the parties, it is worth noting that recent Arab League summits decided to tie any economic cooperation with Israel to progress in the peace process and Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. This decision was seen as the Arab’s main tool to put pressure on Israel to stop its violence against the Palestinians and adhere to its earlier commitments of withdrawal).

The other main theme of the conference, namely reconstructing Iraq, will also have profound effects on the shape of the region. The head of the US Civil Administration Paul Bremer and Adnan Pachachi, a leading Iraqi politician who is also a former foreign minister of Iraq, were among the most important participants in the conference. It was the first time for Arab leaders to officially meet representatives of the American Civil Administration in Iraq, thus implicitly acknowledging its legitimacy, which they had so far refrained from doing. This provides an encouraging sign for Arab companies that wish to get a share in reconstructing Iraq through contracts with the Civil Administration. Indeed, Egypt’s Orascom Telecom has already announced its intention to make a bid to build Iraq’s first nationwide GSM mobile phone network. According to Wahid Abdel Magid of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, “the conference will create an atmosphere that will allow Arab companies to enter into deals, whether directly or indirectly, by teaming up with other companies."

Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed, an Egyptian writer and a leading leftist figure said it was hard to say whether this was desirable or not. “On the one hand you are giving legitimacy to the occupying force, but on the other hand you should not stay out of Iraq at this critical point in history,” he said. One might add, as Abdel Malik said, that such an opportunity should not be lost, because of the substantial economic and political return that it entails. “Let us work with them while speaking out our reservations against them.”

As is customary, the meeting of the international organization provoked a lot of criticism from different quarters. Seen by many as “an exclusive club for the world’s business and political elite to decide how they will run the world,” as described by Khalil, meetings of the WEF have always faced strong opposition from leftist and anti-globalization organizations. In recent years the Swiss police had to use tear gas and truncheons to put down the violent demonstrations that accompanied every meeting in Davos. This time, there were no reports about similar clashes. It might have been the Jordanian government’s extensive deployment of guarding forces, including tanks and commando units, but the backwardness of Arab mass movements is probably also a factor. “We are lagging far behind international mass movements,” said Sayyed Ahmed. “Those guys did a marvelous job in Davos, Seattle and other gatherings of the world’s tycoons.”

Sponsored by the world’s largest multinational corporations and supported by governments of the industrial world, the agenda of the WEF is a reflection of these entities’ interests, which, more often than not, are in conflict with the interests of the masses, according to Khalil. In the words of Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed, “the WEF is the joint staff council of international capitalism.” The meeting in Jordan is particularly threatening to the Arab people because it represents “a new episode in the series of attempts to reshape the region in accordance with American interests, which correspond with Zionist plans,” he said.

The outcome of the three-day conference seems to reinforce this point of view. The aim was to reach some sort of a common vision for the future of the region, as indicated by the title of the meeting. The workshops, panels and discussions between the participants worked towards adopting this vision, which is not drafted in a resolution or set of recommendations, but can still be understood from the media reports, press releases and general atmosphere of the conference. The main features of tomorrow’s Middle East as envisioned by the participants of the conference are as follows:

1. Peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians as prescribed by the roadmap.

2. A “democratic and open” Iraq. The nature of the democracy in question is still ambiguous. However, if a democratic Iraqi will be hostile to American interests, it is unlikely democracy will be allowed to take root. Moreover, concerns about abusing Iraqi resources to serve foreign interests do not seem to be misplaced. Benjamin Netanyahu, currently Israel’s finance minister, recently announced that he expects to see the reopening of the Mosul-Haifa oil pipeline soon.

3. As a result of peace and stability, the region will enter an era of free trade and economic cooperation between the countries of the region and with the United States and European Union. The US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and the European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy were among the most important participants in the conference, and one of the main topics of discussion in the conference was President Bush's initiative for an American-Middle Eastern free trade area. The last day of the conference was full of statements by American, European and international organizations’ officials saying they were committed to economic development in the region. It remains to be seen whether this commitment is condition-free, or whether it will be tied to taking certain economic and political measures, as is usually the case.

4. A Middle East whose countries apply “democracy, rule of law and good governance,” as Figueres said. Of course, this has been a very controversial issue in recent months due to statements by US officials that indicated the US’ intention to pressure Arab governments to make political “reforms.” Again, the nature of these aspired reforms is still in question, and many observers believe they will merely be an excuse for US intervention in the internal affairs of Arab states. They pose the legitimate question of whether the United States would accept, for example, a radical Islamic government, if this were to be the result of truly free elections in Arab countries. The question has yet to be answered.

Khaled Ezzelarab is a Foreign Trade Analyst in the Egyptian Office of the Minister of Foreign Trade and a writer. A graduate of Economics and International Relations from the American University in Cairo, he is currently studying for his Masters. You can reach him at kezzelarab@islam-online.net

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