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Workshop on Gulf as WMD-Free Zone
The Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre (GRC) will hold a two-day closed-door workshop on "The Gulf Region as a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone" today and tomorrow.
Be sure to remind your neighbors to the east ...
Participants at the workshop will explore ways of building adequate political and legal structures to implement the project. A second objective will be to pave the way to achieve consensus among all the nine countries of the Gulf — the six Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) countries and Iran, Iraq and Yemen. GRC Chairman Abdulaziz Sager said "the underlying goal of the project lies in ensuring that the Gulf region becomes a WMD-free zone just as five other regions across the world, with more than 110 countries, have managed to do".

"There is no bigger threat now than the arms race in the Gulf for developing weapons of mass destruction", Sager said, adding that "regional and world reaction to the project has been positive, confirming the appropriate timing of the project". Most of the Gulf countries will be represented by official delegates at the workshop. The GCC states, in their capacity as co-initiators of the project, will send top-level delegations drawn from their diplomatic and military establishments. Attendees will include delegates from the UN affiliate organisations concerned with WMD — which were closely involved in formulating regional disarmament treaties in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, South Pacific, etc., the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-12-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=50982