Under the auspices of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and under the theme of "Financing for Development in the ESCWA Region", Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mojawar opened Wednesday the UN-ESCWA 25th Session at the ministerial level at the Movenpick Hotel, Sana'a.

With nine of its member countries accounting for some 56 and 30 per cent of oil and natural gas world supplies, the UN-ESCWA region is especially rich in these resources, said Executive Secretary Bader Omar AlDafa. At the same time, other member countries have little or no gas or oil reserves. Such disparities among and between countries of the region had kept average growth over the past two years at about 5.6 per cent.

UN-ESCWA, in partnership with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources of Germany (BGR) and in collaboration with the Ministry of Water Resources in Iraq, is organizing an Advanced-Level Seminar on “Negotiations and Dispute Resolution Over International Shared Water Resources in Iraq.” The meeting will take place on 29-31 July 2008 at the UN-House in Beirut, Lebanon. The objectives of this meeting are to encourage a comprehensive vision and strategy for international negotiations on shared water resources.

UN-ESCWA Executive Secretary Bader Omar AlDafa said Thursday that Arab states have achieved uneven results in 2006 in globalization. “Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Arab states has reached a record score of USD$62 billion and an average growth of 36 percent. This growth reflects the efforts exerted by most Arab states to lure FDI,” AlDafa said during a press conference held at the UN-House on the occasion of launching the “Annual Review of Developments in Globalization and Regional Integration in Arab countries 2007”.