January - March 2000

Visitors

SOLIDERE chairman and general manager Nasser Chammaa has received HRH Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saoud; HE Sheikh Abdallah Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, UAE minister of information and culture, with Dr Maneh Saeed Al Outaybah, special advisor to the UAE ruler; Sheikh Ahmad Zaki al Yamani, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia; US senators Bob Kerrey from Nebraska, Ernest Hollings from South Carolina and Richard Shelby from Alabama; and Lord Levy, special envoy of UK prime minister Tony Blair.     Other visitors included Italian parliament speaker Luciano Violante; Qatari minister of municipal and rural affairs Ali Khater; Romanian trade and industry minister Radu Berceanu; Dominincan minister of forgein affairs Edwardo Lattori; Kuwait deputy minister of finance Yusuf Al Dakhil; French deputy Jean-Michel Boucheron with French ambassador to Lebanon Philippe Lecourtier; and a group of Austrian parliamentarians.     Among visiting businessmen were Yusef Al Houzaim, secretary general of King Faisal Islamic Bank; Robert Kleinschmidt, president of Talkville finance company, US; Bruno Bochud, chief executive officer of Gerifonds sa, Switzerland; Marc Chagnas, president of ALSTOM, France; delegations from Crédit Agricole Indo-Suez, the Dutch chamber of commerce, and the chamber of economic development in Monaco.    The media were presented by journalists from Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the US.     Academics and professionals included Spanish architect Enrico Miralles; W.J. Mitchel, dean of the school of architecture and planning at MIT (US); Ahmad Nouwar, director of the Egyptian ministry of culture, accompanied by Wafa' Nouwar, dean of the fine arts institute at Cairo University, and representatives from the national and fine art museums in Egypt; landscape architects from Terra Firma (UK); members of the jury for the Hadîqat as-Samâh international landscaping competition; architects' groups comprising 36 French architects, 14 German architects, Canadian architects and students, and a group of UK and Lebanese architects; as well as delegations consisting of deans and professors of European universities, the union of Italian universities , 40 MBA students from MIT business school, 10 French professors teaching in Lebanon; 40 Danish university students; 45 musicians from the French le Diairi choir; and participants to the American University of Beirut seminar on 'Networking for library development in the Arab states'.