State Donors Conference Held in Gaziantep, Turkey

The fourth periodic meeting of the state donors and organizations was held in the Turkish city of Gaziantep at the invitation of the of Friends of the Syrian people group. The meeting was attended by representatives of countries and organizations from Turkey, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Norway and Denmark, as well as the European Union. During the meeting, representatives of the Syrian interim government presented an overview of its most important projects and their goals, while the British Foreign Office representative Lewis Cooper stressed that her country provides planning for projects that will begin in April next year, especially with regard to the education sector. Nadir Othman, Director of Strategic Planning Office in the Syrian interim government, said that “we tried through presenting an overview of our projects to encourage the state donors to deal positively with the interim government and the needs of the Syrian people and to assure them of the professional execution of the projects carried out by the interim government.” Osman also said that the interim government is an executive body that seeks to provide services to the Syrian people and whose decisions are not affected or dictated by political fluctuations. Mohammed Sarmini said that this meeting is intended to secure support for the projects of the interim government inside Syria, pointing out that among the main projects that have been reviewed during the meeting is the civil defense and e-learning projects. He also said that the Turkish government would play an important role in the training and coordination processes over the coming period. (Source: Syrian Interim Government)