Under the patronage of Egyptian Minister of Transport Mohammad Mansour, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) is holding the “Inter-regional Seminar on the Economic Assessment of International Transport Linkages and on Transport Facilitation” at the Grand Tiba Rose Hotel (the Air force Defense Club), Cairo, on 26-28 June 2007. The Seminar is organized in cooperation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA).

Scheduled to open at 9:30 am on Tuesday 26 June 2007, the Seminar will be attended by concerned representatives of the private and public sectors in UN-ESCWA member countries as well as delegates from Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Djibouti and other African countries. Delegates from the International Federation of Road Transport and the Islamic Bank for Development will also participate in the meeting.
The meeting is intended to strengthen national capacities in assessing the economic feasibility of alternative inter-regional transport linkages; and to strengthen national capacities in introducing transport facilitation practices in general, and in simplifying border crossing procedures along the priority inter-regional transport linkages.

The Seminar is part of the United Nations Development Account Project “Capacity-building through Cooperation in Developing Inter-regional Land and Land-sea Transport Linkages”. The Project is jointly implemented by the United Nations regional commissions with UN-ESCWA being the coordinator. The UN-ESCWA region participating countries in the Project include: Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The objective of the Project is to assist member countries of the UN regional commissions in developing inter-regional transport linkages and to facilitate inter-regional transport, trade and tourism. The Project has an infrastructure component through which an inter-regional transport network will be defined and agreed, and a transport facilitation component.

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For further information: www.unescwa.org and www.unicbeirut.org
NB. The five regional commissions of the United Nations are: the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA), the United Nations for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA).