oman. perhaps i could be corrected if i'm in error on this but not to is salalia oman, the southern most province as such. it will not necessarily hug the coast but it will parallel the coast, it will be inland in southeastern arabia from kuwait all the way from amman. and here they're thinking in ways that i don't read or hear of americans thinking in terms of the revival of railway use. there are at least four separate railway products in saudi arabia that are further down the road than this one. but this one has a long-term objective of linking up with africa and the southwest and linking up with the e.u. through arab north africa. and much of the inspiration is coming from the talks between the chinese and the russians in the past several months where vladimir, the russian railroad transportation minister has met with his chinese counterparts where the russians want to develop northeastern russia which is under tundra but rich and strategic minerals, but russia doesn't have the financin

and oman. there is no comparable agreement or access to facilities agreement with saudi arabia but here, the cautionary word is not to confuse a form with function. though there is not something in the de jure realm, there is a longer engagement and intensity and extensive jeunesse of involvement in terms of geostrategic merelmilitary and strategic issues. the question of the day is with regard of where does the council fit in with this matrix of dynamics and issues and opportunities and challenges? why does it exist in the first place, given the sorry, sad wreckage and disappointing history of some in the previous pan-arab attempts at integration and unity of one form or another. this one has already outlasted all of them save one. that being the league of arab states which had its protocols agreed to in alexandria in september 1944 and it came into existence in 1945, months before they -- the founding of the united nations. at the united nations conference founding in san francisco, it was ma

one leader is no longer in oman but indiana. other representatives of various groups in yemen were certainly not present. as to the kind of assistance, the reactions, and the responses by the gcc, there were four members three years ago at a donors' meeting in london where $4.3 billion was pledged to alleviate human's widespread economic difficulties. that has yet to make its way through. each of the donors has their own reason. like the feasibility studies, lack of institutions, lack of transparency, too much corruption, or capital intensive vs labor-intensive. there's a lot of divergence in the region. however, this last september, at one of the quarterly gcc ministers meetings, they committed $1.8 billion as latest three months ago. i have not seen that written up here, but just this last september. and in saudi are a arabia alone provides $1 billion a year to yemen. there has been a joint commission for some time now, begun under the chairman of saudi arabia's crown prince, but $1 billion a year has been pumped in there for

and so saudi arabia has been doing this longer but so has oman and so has the united arab emirates and the united arab emirates late last leader, the sheik, believed archeologists that its ancestral roots were that feeds in the dam and he gave thousands of yemenis citizenship and two might be in this room those kind of additional ways and on the omani side the building of a road that had to have cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollar from dofar from linking the oman to the eastern most and most impoverished of all of yemen's provinces was all undertaken by the sultan out of oman so there's these different ways. they are now members of nine dccc committees up until about five years ago there were only members of about two or three. yemen is offering 2 million of its laborers to work on the dccc projects which is a big offer and it could meet some of the dccc countries manpower needs. on the other hand, they are typically not well-educated. and they're not of the skills and experience that the dccc economies need which are more midlevel and upper level people. does that give you