Is Economic Reform Key To Middle East Change?
For the last three years, about $60 billion annually in long-term direct investment from foreign corporations has poured into the developing countries of Asia. At the same time, the developing countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have received more than $30 billion a year. As for the poor countries of the Middle East, they’ve taken in barely $6 billion a year. Today (Tuesday, June 7), President Bush is presenting his Greater Middle East initiative to a meeting of the Group of 8 nations at Sea Island (GA). That initiative is about providing greater educational opportunity for societies in which half the people are younger than 20 but at least a third of the population is illiterate. The initiative will also promote movement toward free elections and more open economic systems in the Middle East, home to 5% of the world’s population. A chief aim is to “establish the conditions that make it attractive for money to come back to the region, as well as new money to come to the region
