Prime Minister inaugurates IOR-ARC's ministerial conference

SANA'A, June 25 (Saba)- Prime Minister Ali Mujawar inaugurated on
Thursday activities of the Ninth Ministerial Meeting of Indian Ocean
Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC).

Mujawar, who expressed happiness to open this conference, argued
participants to come out with treaty of trade between member states
in the association and a treaty to establish a council for
cooperation in field of marine transport and establishing a center
for technological exchange between the countries in the region as
well as a center for studying fishery wealth.


"Delaying or slowdown in carrying out cooperation projects and
partnership will cost you precious time to enhance cooperation and
partnership between them," he said, calling to make Sana'a meeting
an embarking point for joint work and real activation to the
organization.

"This meeting… comes in a time during which the world is witnessing
financial crises sweeping global economies and its effects reach
every country. What is pleasing is that effects of the crisis are
much lesser than on big industrial countries," Mujawar indicated.

He touched upon challenges facing states of the association because
of piracy comes from Somali coasts and threatens marine lines in
western Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the south of the Red Sea.
It led to existence of warships from European and Asian countries to
face piracy and protect trade ships.

He talked about Yemen's efforts, despite its limited potentials, in
protecting marine lines and effort when thwarted a number of
piracy's endeavors. He called the international community to and
member states of the IOR-ARC to support Yemen to build its coast
guards and contribute of costs of receiving refugees via choosing
Yemen as regional center for coordination efforts of combating
piracy.

For his part, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi reviewed role
played by Ports of Mocha and Mukalla in receiving and exporting
goods to different countries in the world. This encouraged Yemen to
improve its ports overlooking the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.


"Yemen gives Aden Gulf and the Red Seas' security and stability
special concern in its strategies to ensure easiness of marine trade
activity," said al-Qirbi. " This imposed on Yemen to carry on
shoulders responsibility to protect international maritime in the
Arab Sea and the Gulf of Aden, combating piracy and working on
restoring Somali peace and stability as the real solution to piracy."

He added that piracy and its effects on international trade require
integration of regional and international efforts to eradicating it
and coordination with regional countries not to affect fishermen and
legal maritime.

He indicated that Yemen presented a project to establish a center to
combat piracy in Aden, Mukalla and Hudeidah in purpose of
coordinating efforts of combating piracy and directing information
to ships could face pirates, affirming that Yemen depends on support
of regional countries in this purpose.

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, the
outgoing chairman of the association's ministerial council talked
about strategic locations of countries overlooking the Indian Ocean,
promotion of economic and cultural cooperation and protecting the
wealth of the Indian Ocean and utilizing it well.

He also reviewed his country's efforts while presiding over the
association's eighth ministerial meeting last year. He also tackled
about the efforts of the association for the past three years.

Then Iranian Foreign Minister handed over the presidency of the
Ninth Ministerial Meeting of IOR-ARC to Yemen and chaired by Foreign
Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi.

Al-Qirbi started the secession by standing for a minute as
attribution to the soul of the head delegation of Sri Lanka who was
found died in the hotel he was residing in during his participation
in the conference.

Then al-Qirbi listened to comments and recommendations of the
participating delegations.