Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 112

Bulletin Board

Compiled by Janet McMahon

CONVENINGS

The National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR) will hold its 2001 conference June 7 to 10 at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. The conference will offer two-day institutes, six-hour seminars and three-hour training sessions on a variety of local, regional and international issues, as well as a World Summit for Youth Peacemakers. For complete information, contact NCPCR, 3070 Bristol Pike, Ste. 116, Bensalem, PA 19020, phone (215) 245-6993, fax (215) 245-6994, e-mail <ncpcr@apeacemaker.net>, Web site <www.apeacemaker.net>.

The 5th Annual Dearborn Arab International Festival will take place June 16 to 18 at Warren Avenue in Dearborn, MI. In addition to traditional carnival fare, the festival will feature tents celebrating Arab culture and heritage, as well as the cultures of other ethnic communities, a Children’s Tent, as well as an impressive lineup of international and Arab music and dance on the main stage. Festival organizers are the Arab American Chamber of Commerce and the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS).

The National Arab American Medical Association will hold its 18th International Medical Convention June 25 to 30 in Damascus, Syria. Scientific sessions will focus on common epithelial cancers, infectious diseases, women’s health issues and ischemic coronary artery disease. Roundtable discussions and hospital sessions also will be offered, as well as special presentations by recognized health care authorities in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Participants may sign up for special post-convention tours to Palmyra, Aleppo, Lattakia and Istanbul. For complete information and registration contact NAAMA at 801 S. Adams Rd., Ste. 208, Birmingham, MI 48009, phone (248) 646-3661, fax (248) 646-0617, e-mail <naamausa@aol.com>, Web site (with conference brochure) <http://www.naama.com>.

AWARDS

The World Health Organization awarded its UAE Health Foundation Award for 2001 to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees for “outstanding contribution to health development. UPMRC president Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi will accept the award and address the assembly at the 54th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland on May 17.

Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani human rights lawyer, was one of six recipients of the new Millennium Peace Prize for Women, sponsored by the U.N. Development Fund for Women and the London-based human rights group International Alert. Jahangir, 48, has worked on behalf of minorities, women and children. Despite having received death threats, she said, “I have to be optimistic, this is a movement that has to go forward. There is no going back.”

Palestinian medical student Samah Jabr, who writes from Jerusalem about the current intifada (see p. 15) was one of three first-place winners in the first quarterly drawing for best contribution to the Internet site <http://www.MediaMonitors.net> for her piece, “The Second Intifada: A Palestinian Perspective.”

Chicago journalist Ray Hanania, political and literary activist and author of I’m Glad I Look Like a Terrorist, was feted recently at a banquet honoring the first anniversary of his English-language newspaper the Arab American View. Launched in February 2000 to help promote Arab-American candidates for public office in the Chicago area, the paper published a breakdown of Arab-American voters by suburban community, assisting potential candidates target areas where voter turnout could make a difference. More than 200 supporters applauded Hanania and the Arab American View for helping bring the community together while providing English-language information to younger Arab, as well as American, readers.

DEATHS

Glen F. Brown, a geologist who mapped the Arabian Peninsula, died Feb. 22 at a Fairfax, VA hospital at the age of 89. Born in Graysville, IN, he graduated from the New Mexico School of Mines in 1935, and received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in geology from Northwestern University. He joined the U.S. Geological Survey in 1938 as a junior geologist, retiring in 1982 as senior staff geologist for Mideastern affairs. He conducted some initial surveys in the U.S. and the Middle East on the geology of ground water resources. While leading a mission to Thailand in 1950, the Saudi government asked him to return, and he did so often over the next three decades. Frequently traversing the Saudi desert by camel in the days before jet travel, he helped conserve scarce rainwater and found unexpected sources of groundwater. He published more than 100 papers on the Arabian Peninsula, and the U.S. Interior Department, parent agency of the Geological Survey, credited him with creating the first true geological, geographic, topographic and tectonic maps of Saudi Arabia.

John A. Westberg, who practiced international corporate law in Tehran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, died March 22 of cancer at the Washington Home and Hospice at the age of 69. A native of Springfiled, MA, he graduated from the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia law school. After working on the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, he accepted an assignment in Tehran as regional legal adviser for USAID programs in the Middle East. He established a law practice there in 1968, and helped train young lawyers from Tehran University in corporate law. Forced to leave after the 1979 revolution, he settled in Washington in the early 1980s and assisted the U.S. government in resolving the hostage crisis. He also represented Iranian exiles seeking compensation for their property, and filed claims before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, writing a book about the tribunal’s case law. He co-wrote World Bank guidelines on foreign direct investment law and advised governments in Afghanistan, Jordan and Macedonia on modernizing their legal systems.

Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, the second most powerful leader of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia, died April 16 in Pakistan, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer, at the age of 44. A fighter in the U.S.-backed Islamic resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s, he was among the first wave of Taliban to enter Kabul in 1996. He is believed to have ordered the execution of President Najibullah, who was dragged from the U.N. compound where he was living, tortured and hanged. At the time of his death Rabbani was head of the Taliban governing ministers’ council.