The Seat of AARINENA Secretariat
During the Kuwait Executive Committee Meeting, it has been decided to contact Dr. Dennis Fada, FAO Legal Officer for amending the rule concerning the financial contribution to the secretary of AARINENA, erasing the term “free of Charge”, along with other amendments of AARINENA Constitution.
Contacts
with all country members have been done seeking their interest to host AARINENA
Secretary noting that AARINENA would contribute to support Secretarial work for
up to 5000 US$ per year. Positive answers have been received from Cyprus and
Jordan. The final decision is going to
be taken during the AARINENA General Assembly in 2002.
RAIS Secretariat
At the last meeting of the Executive Committee in Kuwait in May, a proposal for the establishment of a Regional Agricultural Information System (RAIS) in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) was prepared by FAO and agreed on. Some initial work has been completed by AARINENA members to develop the basis of a new website for AARINENA, which should be launched soon. The work constituted of collecting web addresses of all NARS in each AARINENA country.
With a view to the medium term, the Committee has agreed on a proposal for a major international initiative to support the RAIS, for which funding will be sought.
Until an agreement can be reached with a funding agency, the Committee agreed that it would be necessary to establish a Secretariat for the RAIS. In view of the lack of financial resources at the Committee's disposal in the near future, AARINENA will have to find a temporary location for the RAIS Secretariat within a strong NARS before consulting International Organizations for their interest to host the Secretariat.
The
opinion of the members of AARINENA was sought, through contacting them, to
establish whether any member wishes to take on the duties of RAIS Secretariat.
An outline for the Terms of Reference of this function was prepared,
describing what will need to be done before and after external funds are
available. An official positive response has been received from Iran.
During a pre-meeting to the
Consultation meeting on Development of a Common strategy to promote partnership
in ARD in the Mediterranean Basin, held in FAO Rome on 27 Feb. 2001, the
AARINENA website was discussed with Dr. Chaparro. Dr. Rudgard has proposed to
help AARINENA to have its own website.
Date
Palm and Olive Networks
To
establish ARD Network based on Commodity Chain Approach, it was recommended that
Olive and Date Palm, which are not mandated by CGIAR, are the most important
crops for the region.
Concerning hosting the Date Palm Secretariat, Iran
and Morocco showed interest but the decision is going to be taken jointly by
AARINENA and European Partners upon the implementation of the project.
During
Kuwait Executive Committee meeting, it was suggested that for the implementation
of Date Palm Network, a consultant would be appointed to visit all concerned
countries and take their inputs from their national programs. Then he should
coordinate in order to prepare a final proposal. A new call for the project is
supposed to be launched through the European forum."