Abu-Ghazaleh Addresses the Bosphorus Conference for Regional Cooperation
29-Nov-2011
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Special to ag-IP-news Agency
ISTANBUL - The Bosphorus Summit for regional cooperation held under the patronage of President of the Republic of Turkey His Excellency Abdullah Gul concluded its activities in Istanbul.
The Summit addressed the regional partnerships in the areas of business, education, youth, women, energy, telecommunications, defense industry, agriculture and services.
HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman and CEO of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org), tackled in the opening session the regional cooperation achievable through equal partnerships based on the grounds of an environment of trust and cooperation, adding that the Arab nation that came out recently from under occupation is still sensitive to this situation and requires to be assured that the trends of cooperation are not intended to become means of domination.
Meanwhile, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh called for creating an Arab, Turkish and Iranian regional cooperation as a core of a bloc of the neighboring countries in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) and to dismiss all previous attempts to create the Middle East bloc. He also called for going towards regionalization rather than globalization because the future is in favour of the geographical blocs. Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh appealed to the concerned parties to exploit the opportunities offered by the economic crisis as there is no global crisis, but rather a Western one which has adverse impact on some countries while many other countries may prosper as a result.
HE Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh called on the countries of the region and the world to deal with the current Arab renaissance positively, without any foreign intervention except within the limits of positive cooperation. Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh expects that the current Arab renaissance shall positively infect all parts of the world including the Western world, whose peoples will rise up as a result of the increasing inability of their governments to cope with the required services rendered to citizens.
At the final session, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh was also a keynote speaker where he addressed the need for educational reform at the regional and global levels aims at creating educated citizens, not just creative learners. He explained that education for citizenship is based on the fact that the student has to learn the history, geography, culture, principles and aspirations of his community and country at all scholastic stages and to also contribute to the social work while studying in order to learn how to service his community.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh pointed out that we must shift to learning instead of education, recalling that the word "EDUCATION” is of Roman origin which means to "PULL OUT".
He added that in a knowledge-based society, we have a unique opportunity to shift to learning because the knowledge atmosphere provides our young people with opportunities to learn through research and case studies better than what we can teach them, as is the case in the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Graduate School of Business which enabled it to win the award for best business school in Asia. He urged the peoples of the region to learn their basic languages; Arabic, Persian and Turkish as learning the languages is the most powerful tool for establishing and unifying the efforts towards an economic and social cooperation.