A recent meeting on the coast of North Africa promises to strengthen ties between scientific communities in Trieste and Tunisia.

Tunisia and Trieste

Italy's President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and representatives from Trieste's scientific community, including ICTP Director Miguel Virasoro, met with their counterparts in Tunisia in late October to discuss potential avenues of future cooperation. The meeting, which took place in the villa, El Kousour, at Gamarth, near the capital city of Tunis, was opened by Abdelkrim Zbidi, representing Tunisia's Minister for Scientific and Technological Research, and Armando Sanguini, Italian Ambassador to Tunisia, who was responsible for organising the event.
Discussions focussed on how the "Trieste System" of scientific institutions--ICTP, Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP), International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), International Centre for Science and Technology (ICS), University of Trieste, and Area Science Park--could pursue projects of mutual interest to Italy and Tunisia. One positive outcome of the meeting was the creation of an ICTP affiliate centre in applied mathematics at the Polytechnic of Tunis, which will begin operations next year.
President Ciampi was in Tunisia both as representative of the Italian government and the European Union. As a result, his presence carried wide-ranging significance for future relationships between scientific communities in Europe and those in Tunisia and the entire African continent. In fact, the seeds of cooperation, planted and nurtured by Trieste's scientific community with scientists and scientific institutions throughout the developing world over the past three decades, may be on the verge of blossoming into full partnerships--thanks to the convergence of a number of factors.
First, nations such as Tunisia are making sustained investments in science and technology. The positive impacts of these investments were clearly on display at the meeting in Tunisia not only in terms of the scientific discussions that took place, but also in the engaging interactive exhibits found in the recently opened Tunis Science City, which has been designed to encourage enthusiasm for science among students of all ages. Representatives from Tunis Science City will soon sign a memorandum of understanding with Fondazione internazionale Trieste per il progresso e la libertà delle scienze and other Trieste institutions designed to enhance cooperative activities for scientific education and public understanding of science in both countries.
Second, ICTP has enjoyed a long track record of success in forging cooperative programmes with scientists from the developing world and, as a result, has earned a good deal of trust and support from both individual researchers and institutions in the South.
That trust and support was also on display at the meeting in Tunisia, most notably in a presentation by Zohra Ben Lakhdar, professor of physics at the University of Tunis and co-coordinator of the ICTP-supported Northern African Network on Spectroscopy (NANS). Lakhdar shares her 'network' responsibilities with Yosr Gamal, a physicist at Cairo University's National Institute of Laser Enhanced Sciences. NANS has proven instrumental in improving the state of physics, and more specifically of spectroscopy, throughout Africa. Algeria, for example, has joined NANS, and Cameroon and Senegal have sent scientists to Tunisia for training and research in programmes supported by ICTP.
Third, the presence of President Ciampi and the probing questions he asked about the future of the Trieste System indicate that the Italian government will remain a strong ally of science in the developing world and that Trieste will continue to be a focal point of its efforts to promote scientific and technical skills throughout the South. President Ciampi's emphasis on results--people trained, knowledge transferred, and science utilised to address local, regional and national needs--conforms to the historic mission of the Trieste System and is likely to serve as a valuable framework for progress in the future.
And fourth, global events since last September show that there has never been a more important time in recent history for supporting efforts to promote North-South cooperation in ways that prove fruitful to the entire global community. Science, with its emphasis on international exchange and universal knowledge, will likely be one of the underlying elements of such endeavors.
The Trieste System, which is now approaching its fourth decade of institutional life, is likely to remain a key player in these efforts. The meeting in Tunisia offers one more example of how.

Gallieno Denardo
ICTP Office of External Activities

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