Zaki Nusseibeh addressing the 2^nd UAE- France FORUM:

Educational and cultural institutions are the best mechanisms to achieve engagement, partnerships, and collaboration between nations.

H.E. Zaki Nusseibeh, Cultural Advisor to HH the President of UAE, Chancellor of the UAEU, affirmed the long term and unique relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the French Republic, occurs at a moment when the UAE s positive strategic relations with our regional neighbours and the wider international community are more important than ever before. 

In his speech during the 2nd UAE- France FORUM, he noted that this forum will illustrate the power of educational and cultural institutions as mechanisms to achieve engagement, partnerships, and collaboration between nations.  It will also show how such cultural objectives and international alliances can work together to restore, achieve, and sustain peace in regions affected by unrest of various kind.

Universities serve to foster intellectual and cultural growth. They do this by bringing together the finest minds and students to interact and thereby to produce knowledge, invention, and creative work. In doing so they both demonstrate and uphold the value to society of institutions that can combine diversity and difference in harmonious community.  They are sites and places where one issue or artefact can be examined from a multiplicity of perspectives , he added. 

They are sites and places where multiple minds might find common ground simply by meeting. They are also places whose effective function depends on cordial collegiality.  Universities also operate as spaces that can be local, national, regional, and global in reach.  Inside these spaces a university can have impact on families, society, government, economy, and geography and the location of this space will be anywhere in the globe that knowledge, invention and creative work travel to.  The community of this space will be all the people brought together and included in the production of such work , he continued.

H.E. said: It is only recently that I joined the UAEU as its Chancellor. My appointment is deeply touched me given the purpose, value, function, and reach of universities I have just outlined. I have devoted my personal and professional live to the service of promoting international political, economic, and societal cooperation by advancing understanding of UAE culture and values. I have invested my energies in bringing to the UAE the widest range of educational and cultural institutions, events, and activities from across the globe .

I have committed myself to these endeavours because of my firm belief that it is by being with each other in our diversity that we can learn and grow from each other and find the common binds that lead us to invest in each other s welfare and security.  It is therefore with this personal enthusiasm that I greet you this morning, because your Forum aligns with the objectives I have always held to be important and valuable he concluded.

H. E. Xavier Chatel, Ambassador of France to the UAE said that the strength of the historical relations between the UAE and France, in addition to the mutual cultural visions between the two countries contribute to strengthening cultural, social and academic knowledge and partnership between the two nations through the UAEU higher education and academic research. The fruitful cooperation creates a common ground to achieve peace against the challenges facing humanity through cultural and civilizational dialogue and to preserve the human heritage through joint cultural and diplomatic effort.