THE 4th IISS REGIONAL SECURITY SUMMIT
THE MANAMA DIALOGUE
Manama Saturday 8 December 2007
GCC SECURITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Opening Remarks
Dr John Chipman CMG,
Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS
Can I thank the US Secretary of Defense Gates for his tremendously interesting presentation this morning, and for his very frank and comprehensive answers to questions. He is engaged, as are one or two other ministers now, in some bilaterals that were previously scheduled. Some of those bilaterals include listening to the conversation that we are about to begin. Secretary Gates is with us, and so is everyone else, which is splendid. The US Congress call these kinds of remarks filibustering, and they are not always successful.
Let me now announce the opening of the second plenary of the Manama Dialogue on the theme GCC Security and Economic Development. Some of you might ask why we have a plenary on GCC Security and Economic Development, and it is important to note that only a few days ago the Gulf Cooperation Council held its Head of State Summit Meeting, and it was hosted by Qatar in Doha. Our speaker, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al Thani, is the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar. This GCC Head of State Summit Meeting only took place a few days ago, where questions of GCC security were discussed, but also rather innovative questions of economic development, especially given the unprecedented presence of the President of Iran, President Ahmadinejad. He made a number of proposals along the lines suggested of one interlocutor in our previous session, concerning the prospect of enriching economic development between the GCC states and Iran, as part of developing a greater diplomatic understanding between these two sides of the Gulf. It is only fitting that in our second plenary we have the Prime Minister of the recently-held host country of the GCC Head of State Summit Meeting, to give his reflections on GCC security and economic development, against the background of that event, and also looking to the future.
