Ministers of Agriculture of Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon begin meetings in Beirut

The meetings of the Syrian Minister of Agriculture, Engineer Muhammad Hassan Qatna, the Lebanese Abbas Hajj Hassan, the Jordanian Khaled Hanifat and the Iraqi Muhammad Karim al-Khafaji, began today in the Grand Serail in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in the presence of the Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

In his speech at the opening of the meetings, Mikati stressed that achieving food security for all is one of the main priorities of the four countries and other Arab countries, especially in light of recent events in the world, which actually revealed a deep gap that should be noted and related to the need to adjust the priorities and focus primarily on the agricultural and food sectors, in addition to the exchange and integration of production as well as the simplification of export and import procedures and the flow of people and expertise.

Mikati said: Faced with the economic and food crises that the world is suffering from, it has become imperative for us as neighboring Arab countries to have complementary cooperation in terms of production and marketing, with the necessity of coordination among us in the agricultural and industrial fields.

In turn, Minister Qatana said in his speech that the nucleus of this meeting was launched on the sidelines of the regional conference for the near east of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in the Republic of Iraq in February 2022, through which we agreed to promote and develop agricultural trade exchange, overcome obstacles related to agricultural and veterinary quarantine procedures between countries and review the agricultural calendar taking into account the periods of local production in each country, studying the possibility of formulating a joint cooperation agreement in the scientific, technical and economic fields, and adopting a joint action plan to meet the challenges facing the agricultural sector in the region and their impact on resources, the decline in agricultural production and national food security.

NR