The Middle East

This month saw the grand inauguration of Qatar’s Education City, a massive undertaking aimed at positioning Qatar not only as a regional leader, but as a global one in the economy of the 21st century.

Earlier this month, Qatar witnessed an historic milestone in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry when Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II) and ExxonMobil signed a Heads of Agreement (HOA) to provide the US with 15.6m tonnes of LNG per year. The deal is expected to bring some USD12bn to the country, the largest single investment in Qatar's growing energy industry. Furthermore, the project will see the country become the single largest supplier of LNG to the US market.

When Turkey’s parliament reconvened October 1 after its protracted summer break, a brace of controversial issues lay in wait. With the possibility that last year’s elections might be cancelled and Turkish-US relations might once again go into a nose-dive over Iraq, many Turks were bracing themselves for a bumpy start to the new legislative year. Yet within a few days, the government had successfully negotiated the policy rapids and was in an upbeat mood for the mid-October IMF review.

The latest and, according to many observers, most important meeting in the ongoing Doha Round of global trade talks opened in Cancun, Mexico on September 10th. As trade ministers from the World Trade Organisation’s member states arrived for what promised to be a tough week of discussion and debate, agricultural subsidies - that most stubborn of free-trade barriers - was on everyone’s mind. Almost two years after it was opened in the Qatari capital, the Doha Round has accomplished little. Farmers have proven a most resilient bunch and their sway in many of the world’s leading industrial countries threatens to undermine the wider aims of global free traders.

With the investigation into one of Turkey’s top business empires still widening and deepening, troubling revelations about the embattled Uzan Group have now led to bigger question marks over the general health of Turkey’s banking system.

The following interview with Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is taken from the forthcoming Oxford Business Group publication, Emerging Turkey 2004. For more information on how to order a copy of the most comprehensive review of the Turkish economy to date, please write to us at mail@oxfordbusinessgroup.com.