Calls to consolidate dialogue within Med forum

The foreign ministers of the Mediterranean Forum wound up Friday a meeting in Tangiers with a call to consolidate dialogue among member states.

The member countries agreed on the need to give more visibility and vigor to the action of the Forum, set up in 1994 by Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey.

The body is meant to be an informal platform for consultation and dialogue between these Mediterranean countries.

The Tangiers meeting was an opportunity to trade views on the various political, economic, cultural and human aspects of cooperation, said the foreign ministers in a final communiqu?.

The meeting adopted projects related to the celebration of the Mediterranean year, the creation of a Mediterranean Prize and the holding of a global Mediterranean forum in Lisbon in 2003.

Talks during the Tangiers encounter focused on cooperation, regional integration, investments, Mediterranean heritage promotion, security and the situation in the Middle-East.

Participants deplored the gap between the northern and southern banks of the Mediterranean in economic development and called for more efforts to bring in harmony within the basin.

Morocco proposed, in this connection, the creation of a Euro-Mediterranean economic space.