Former French PM calls for Middle East powers to pool resources

Middle Eastern countries with the most access to oil and gas should set up a common market to pool resources together and share them for the benefit of the region, according France’s former prime minister.

DUBAI // Countries in the Middle East with most access to oil and gas should pool resources and share them for the benefit of the region, according to a former French prime minister.

Dominique de Villepin said the Middle East should create more regional alliances to avoid more governments failing as they did during the Arab Spring in 2011.

“We should learn from our failures, but public satisfaction shouldn’t be the only criteria,” he said. “One of the big responsibilities of modern leadership is to push big objectives.

“We need a huge project between Europe and Africa, for example, and a huge regional project for the Middle East because you cannot only analyse the satisfaction in one country when you have a region that is burning like the Middle East. Only satisfaction in one country like the UAE is not enough.”

Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Mr de Villepin said the suffering of people in Syria and Palestine had to be taken into account. “This is the responsibility of each government, which is why you need big projects,” he said. “In this region where you have so much oil and gas, you need a common market, putting together some resources and sharing for the benefit of the region. Big ideas are needed, leadership means vision and there is not enough vision in today’s world.”

Mary Robinson, former prime minister of Ireland, said the Arab Spring could have been predicted after looking at data.

“There was strong economic development but no participation in rights,” she said. “Last year was very important in setting a new bar for governments and for all countries.”

Others said the world was shifting, with societies becoming increasingly globalised while governments were turning more nationalistic.

“Europe is turning nationalistic,” said Mahmoud Jibril, former Libyan prime minister. “On the other hand, Arab societies are getting connected because the name of the game in a global world is connectivity, especially with the youth who have more dreams.

“Governments faced those uprisings with old tools from the industrial age – the educational system, the workforce ... are related to the past. Governments that don’t adapt themselves to this new age will fail.”

He said more investment was needed in youth and women. “Women are more imaginative in terms of skills and imagination to the new world,” he said.

“The more inclusive you are as a government, the more legitimate you become, the more secure the regime then the more development should [take] place. The security apparatus won’t be enough in the new age, you have to invest in development and young people.”

Mohammed Yunus, Nobel laureate and founder of Gra­meen Bank, agreed. “Humans are the most important resource,” he said. “This generation of young people have a lot more potential than we had before because of their access to technology. A five-year-old today is more technologically advanced than a 50-year-old.

“The government belongs to the older generation but they are not technologically savvy, their speed is slower than the people’s and there’s a technology mismatch between young and old generations, which becomes a threat because you’re not communicating.”

He said a complete redesign of the education system was needed because it was a system producing workers. “It’s wrong,” he said. “We need an entrepreneurship-driven system. We need citizens’ efforts so that people become aware we are sitting on a time bomb in regards to climate change and wealth distribution.”

Mr Yunus said the impending danger shaking governments was a concentration of wealth, with 62 people in the world owning more wealth than the bottom half of the population.