Jordanian economist Fayez Tarawneh, who led his country's delegation to peace talks with Israel in the 1990s and served as prime minister twice, died on Wednesday at the age of 72.
Tarawneh was a confidant of the late King Hussein, representing Jordan at a crucial foreign policy juncture that resulted in long-term security arrangements with Israel and a firmer alliance with the US.
“Jordan lost one of its loyal men,” Prime Minister Bisher Al Khasawneh said in an official announcement of the death of Tarawneh. Local media reported that he died of a terminal illness.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat had signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. Syria's president at the time, Hafez Al Assad, leaned towards striking his own deal with the Israelis when King Hussein agreed to the talks.
For decades Jordan had fended off accusations by some Palestinians and "rejectionist" regimes, such as in Syria, that it was willing to compromise on the Palestinian cause.
Jordan rejected efforts by Egypt's Anwar Sadat to include it in peace talks with Israel in the late 1970s.
So when Arafat agreed to Oslo, which promised Palestinians self-determination but did not ultimately deliver, and talks between Assad and Israel progressed, Jordan thought itself vindicated in having struck its own deal.
Washington initiated talks between Jordan and Israel in late 1993, and as peace between Assad and Israel appeared imminent, King Hussein ordered Tarawneh, who was also Jordan’s ambassador to Washington, to wrap up the negotiations.
In October 1994, Jordan signed the peace treaty with Israel, known as the Wadi Araba Accord. Assad, for reasons that are still the subject of debate, eventually refused to sign a deal.
“Palestine has its own men,” King Hussein told Tarawneh and other members of the Jordanian delegation in 1994.
They were briefing the monarch on details of maximalist positions the Jordanian side had taken on formulating treaty clauses regarding the sharing of resources in the hope of safeguarding Palestinian water rights.
Two terms as PM
Tarawneh was a staunch royalist and obeyed King Hussein in accelerating the deal. Like many Jordanian officials, he was wary of Jordan becoming an "alternative homeland" for the Palestinians as Israel expanded settlement building and its expropriation of Palestinian land.
He later noted that the treaty regained 340 square kilometres of Jordanian land, without what he described as any adverse effect on the “overarching goal” of a comprehensive Middle East peace that would restore Palestinian rights.
Like his mentor, King Hussein, Tarawneh was highly pragmatic.
The New York Times reported that Tarawneh was sitting among the Arab ambassadors on the White House lawn who witnessed the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accord between Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin went to where the ambassadors were sitting to shake hands with them. Most of the Arab envoys shook hands with him and unease appeared on the face of Syrian foreign minister Walid Mouallem. But Tarawneh was comfortable.
"Nobody told us this was going to happen," Tarawneh said, "but we are gentlemen after all."
"When I meet the Israeli ambassador at a reception, I don't hide behind a pillar. We do shake hands. Shaking hands does not really change anything."
Tarawneh graduated with a doctorate in economics from the University of Southern California in 1980. He sat on the board of several private companies and was seen as being in favour of maintaining a large role for the Jordanian government in the economy.
In 1998, a year before King Hussein’s death, the monarch appointed Tarawneh, then chief of the Royal Court, as prime minister.
He held the position until King Abdullah II became monarch in 1999.
In 2012, King Abdullah reappointed him as prime minister for five months, as the Jordanian economy floundered.
Tarawneh remained close to the new monarch, serving once again as chief of the Royal Court.
King Abdullah is expected to attend his funeral in Amman.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Museum of the Future in numbers
- 78 metres is the height of the museum
- 30,000 square metres is its total area
- 17,000 square metres is the length of the stainless steel facade
- 14 kilometres is the length of LED lights used on the facade
- 1,024 individual pieces make up the exterior
- 7 floors in all, with one for administrative offices
- 2,400 diagonally intersecting steel members frame the torus shape
- 100 species of trees and plants dot the gardens
- Dh145 is the price of a ticket
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
THE SPECS
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Transmission: 6-speed manual
Fuel consumption: 10.2 l/100km
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Where can I submit a sample?
Volunteers can now submit DNA samples at a number of centres across Abu Dhabi. The programme is open to all ages.
Collection centres in Abu Dhabi include:
- Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC)
- Biogenix Labs in Masdar City
- Al Towayya in Al Ain
- NMC Royal Hospital in Khalifa City
- Bareen International Hospital
- NMC Specialty Hospital, Al Ain
- NMC Royal Medical Centre - Abu Dhabi
- NMC Royal Women’s Hospital.
Emergency
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