NNA – 07/23/2012 – In a festive gathering of many Spanish students of CEU University of Madrid and other from St. Thomas University – Dallas, Dr. Habib Chamoun, President of the PIRC, affiliated with the WLCU (World Lebanese Cultural Union) based in the United States, signed on July 21 a Memorandum of Understanding with the CEFYP (Centro of Estudios Fenicios y Púnicos) to exchange, centralize, and protect the Phoenician cultural heritage and better enable the diffusion of its precious and usurious values.
Dr. Chamoun wished that these people deserve the three Nobel Prizes for Literature, Economy and mainly Peace.
Dr. Angel Algarra Paredes, President of the CEU Business School, the event location, stressed the importance of this agreement which allows a real-time permanent bond that will provide monitoring and protection of this culture.
Dr. Antoine Menassa, President of HALFA, one of the Branches of the WLCU based in Paris, who went to Madrid for the occasion, expressed his revolt on the enormous losses and the unrecoverable legacy sustained by some demolitions of Archeological sites in the region, for financial reasons. He fights with relevant authorities including UNESCO within an association, the Saving Heritage Association of Tripoli (ASPT – Association Sauvegarde Patrimoine de Tripoli), which is one of the founding members for the awakening of many sites at risk that have been recently protected and reclassified as World Heritage Sites.
In conclusion, Dr. Carlos Gonzalez Wagner, Director of the Phoenician and Modest Studies Center, and co-signer of this agreement, insisted that “despite the disappearance of the Phoenicians we all act as such”. He seemed convinced that the world would bypassed the economic crisis if these people still existed.
This Conference was followed by a videoconference with Dr Salim Khalaf, CEO of the PIRC from the United States, and Dr Nick Kahwaji, PIRC Secretary from British Columbia – Canada. They congratulated the honour of a prize awarded by the PIRC and Dr.Chamoun to Dr.Wagner for his perseverance and the work done.
