|
Beirut city center welcomed this quarter Their Royal Highnesses
Princes Bandar Bin Saoud, Bandar Bin Khaled and Khaled Bin Faysal of
Saudi Arabia; Cardinal Patriarch Sfeir with former prime minister
Rafik Hariri; Monaco prime minister Patrick Leclerq; European
Commission minister Chris Patton; Terje Roed-Larsen, representative
of the UN secretary-general; British MP Nick Raynsford, minister of
construction, housing and planning at the UK department of the
environment, transport and the regions; US senator from Connecticut
Joseph Lieberman, trade department representative Thomas Sams, and
state department economic affairs officer for the Near East and
Africa Douglass Bell; Bulgarian parliament speaker Jordan Socolov;
German member of parliament Christoph Moosbauer; French national
assembly member Jacques Chaumont and financial committee director
Stanislas Godefroy; Polish army chief of staff General Henryk
Szumski; former Jordanian minister Samih Darwaza; and a Chile
parliamentary delegation.
Other visitors included a 24-person delegation from Italy
participating in Project Lebanon 2000; 250 members of the
international Rotary club; businessmen from Chile; 120 French naval
officers; 40 army officers from France and 26 from Italy; 25
representatives of French industrial and commercial firms; 8 members
of French architecture and interior design companies;
representatives of Belgian construction companies; 25 technical
advisors from Holland: and Hermès group president Eric Festy.
From international financial institutions came National Bank of
Liberia governor and former finance minister George Saleebi; Natexis
Bank vice-president Hervé de Bonvoisin and regional director Michel
Chaterlain; ABN-AMRO Bank senior executive vice-president Gan
Koopman and vice-president Hanno Van Veen; Chase Manhattan Bank
executive director for the Middle East and Europe Federico Imbert;
member of the Union Bancaire Privée management Heinz Blank; and a
delegation from Oppenheimer fund management.
Academics included Washington university Islamic Institute
vice-president Dr Jamal Mwerzanji; Harvard Business school executive
director Lynton Hayes; 17 university lecturers from the school of
architecture at the university of Damascus; 25 Lebanese university
students; and a group of architecture students from the American
University of Beirut.
Journalists from the New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
Washington Post, EuroNews, Multimedia International network, Swiss
TV and Swedish TV; 15 Arab, 25 Dutch, and other journalists from
Italy, USA and France, also came to the city center. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|