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■ ■

The Economics
Of Mideast Peace

With electricity coursing through the post-peace
Middle East, can dollars be far behind?

DOUGLAS DAVIS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

I

ast week, nine emissaries

from Morocco fanned out
across the world to invite
heads of state and govern-
ment to attend an unprecedent-
ed economic conference in
Casablanca.
The conference, which runs
from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, will be held
under the auspices of presidents
Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin and
will be hosted by Morocco's King
Hassan.
It will be unprecedented not
only because of its superpower pa-
tronage but also because no less
than 2,000 company execu-
tives will take the op-
portunity of
peering behind
the curtain at
regional trade
prospects in
a post-peace
Middle East.
It will be
unprece-
dented, too,
because Is-
rael is playing
a leading role in
the event, an inch-
cation of Israel's grow-
ing acceptance in a world
that viewed it
through a prism of
unyielding hostility
for the past half-century.
From Morocco, delegates will
continue to Jerusalem and then
on to the Jordanian capital of Am-
man for meetings with local busi-
ness executives and visits to local
plants and facilities.
As the diplomatic pieces fall
into place and political accords are
signed between Israel and its
Arab neighbors, there is little
doubt that a significant peace div-
idend, with Israel at the fulcrum,
is not far behind. The only ques-
tions are how large the dividend
will be and how quickly it will ma-
terialize.
The choice of Morocco as the
first stop of this trade juggernaut
is not entirely coincidental. Mo-
rocco has long played a special, al-
beit clandestine, mediation role
in Middle East peacemaking.
It hosted secret negotiations be-
tween Israeli and Egyptian offi-
cials that led to the historic visit
to Jerusalem by the late President
Anwar Sadat in 1977, paving the
way to the full-scale peace treaty
two years later.
More recently, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Min-

ister Shimon Peres visited Rabat
as guests of King Hassan last
September, while simultaneous
economic talks culminated in an
announcement by Trade Minis-
ter Micha Harish late last year
that trade with Morocco had been
normalized.
The prerequisite of this an-
nouncement was a slew of agree-
ments that had created the
infrastructure for such relations,
including pacts on air transport,
banking arrangements, direct
telephone and mail links, and vis-
its by religious leaders, business-
men and tourists.
While Egypt was the first
Arab state to
publicly
break ranks
and start trad-
ing with Israel,
economic coopera-
tion has been stunted,
reflecting the "cold
peace" that has existed
between Israel and Egypt
since the 1979 treaty. As
the current peace process
expands and Cairo's sense
of isolation vis-a-vis Israel
is reduced, trade is expected to
undergo a rapid acceleration.
The impetus has
come from the Is-
raeli-Jordanian ac-
cord and first signs are expected
to come in three-way joint ven-
tures with Israel, Egypt and Jor-
dan, based on the Red Sea nexus
of resort towns: Eilat (Israel),
Taba (Egypt) and Akaba (Jordan).
The electricity grids of Egypt
and Israel recently were connect-
ed at Eilat and Taba, and this will
be followed, according to Israeli
Energy Minister Moshe Shahal,
by the addition of Akaba within
three months.
There also are plans to con-
struct a road linking Akaba-Eilat-
Taba to create a "Red Sea
Riviera," with major tourist-dol-
lar implications for all three
states.
In addition, Egypt and Jordan
will pursue separate economic
projects with Israel. Heading the
list are plans to build a $1.4 bil-
lion network of six highways ra-
diating from Israel to Cairo and
Amman. Four of the highways
will straddle the Israeli- Jordan-
ian border, while two will link
Egypt and Israel (from Eilat at Is-
rael's southern tip and Tel Aviv
in the middle of the country).
There already are plans for the

