“Il Mediterraneo alle soglie del Nuovo Millennio”: this is the title of the international forum organised by the Regione Lazio (Italy), in collaboration with UNIMED, on the 21st and 22nd of September, in Rome, in the framework of the project “Latium between Europe and the Mediterranean”.
The engagement of this regional authority starts from the intent, as explained by Pedrag Matvejevic, Head of the Scientific Committee, “to make Latium become a link between Europe and the Mediterranean basin, thus gaining an active and proactive role in an enlarged European society that is gradually welcoming cultural pluralism and offering the opportunity to work and live in a multi-ethnical and multi- language environment marked by equal opportunities and dignity”.
The meeting opened on the 21st September with a high-level round table gathering representatives
of the cultural sector. Within the debate session devoted to “Fractures and convergences” and moderated by Franco Rizzi, Director General of UNIMED, Mrs. Alessandra Paradisi has been invited to represent COPEAM as example of what civil society can concretely do in favour of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. She pointed out the fact that the fractures of our time are rooted in “the fear, the real enemy of our societies” and, in this view, Mr. Mustapha Ceric, Reis-Ul-ulema of
Bosnia Herzegovina, stressed that “tolerance is a proof of strength, intolerance of weakness”. Among the speakers, Mr. Nourreddine Hached, Vice Secretary General of the League of the Arab States, and the historian Salvatore Bono who underlined the need of a “new strategy” for the Mediterranean region considering our “destiny of being together”.