Excerpts: MIT, Saudi Aramco intensify collaboration. Iran opposition says
West end appeasement

+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 24 June '12:"Aramco, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) intensify collaboration" June 24, 2012
SUBJECT:MIT, Saudi Aramco intensify collaboration
QUOTE:"Saudi Aramco to build a satellite R&D center in Cambridge(Mass.]"
FULL TEXT:DHAHRAN – Saudi Aramco President and CEO Khalid A. Al-Falih and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Susan Hockfield signed
a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Saturday[23 June] here, providing a
framework that will greatly expand the research and education partnership
between MIT and Saudi Aramco.

"Our signing today is a solid testimony to the vision of advancing
technology and higher education shared between Saudi Aramco and MIT,"
Al-Falih said. "We have a long history in forging partnerships with
world-class institutions. What excites me is the coming together of great
minds from Saudi Aramco and MIT to find solutions for the world’s challenges
while pursuing research of common interest and building human capital at MIT
and Saudi Aramco, and contributing to building a knowledge economy in Saudi
Arabia."

Several elements of the MOU have been agreed to for implementation.

Saudi Aramco has agreed to become a Founding Member of the MIT Energy
Initiative (MITEI), raising its participation from its current Sustaining
Membership. This will entail a substantial increase in the scope of research
collaboration, encompassing renewable energy; energy efficiency; energy
economics; CO2 management and conversion; desalination; advanced materials;
and a range of hydrocarbon production areas such as computational reservoir
modeling and simulation, geophysics and unconventional gas. MITEI Founding
Members commit to a $5-million-per-year program for a period of five years.
Al-Falih also announced Saudi Aramco’s plans to create a satellite R&D
center in Cambridge, Mass., to enhance the research collaboration and
facilitate the exchange of researchers.

Saudi Aramco and MIT also have agreed to the terms of an enhancement of the
Ibn Khaldun Postdoctoral Fellowship for Saudi Arabian women and to the terms
of an engagement with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service aimed at increasing
entrepreneurial activity in Saudi Arabia.

Hockfield said "the relationship contemplated by the MOU would represent
another substantial partnership between academia and industry, and serve MIT’s
commitment to advance research, technology development and education around
the world. We welcome this opportunity to build the scale and scope of our
existing partnership and to enhance the transfer of knowledge between our
two institutions."

The MOU contemplates extensive additional cooperation in several areas:

• participation by Saudi Aramco in MIT’s Master of Engineering in
Manufacturing program;
• collaboration in enhanced precollege teaching in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics through extension of the MIT/BLOSSOMS program;
• collaboration in online education;
• professional development through customized short courses and
participation in advancing higher education for women in energy engineering
fields;
• capacity-building, including possible job fairs and development of career
opportunities in Saudi Arabia for suitable graduates;
• entrepreneurship and innovation programs;
• professional development and lifelong learning programs, including joint
conferences, workshops and technical symposia, and customized short courses;
and
• cultural exchange and outreach programs involving the King Abdulaziz
Center for World Culture, the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology,
and the Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture.
These cooperative efforts will be developed by a high-level MIT-Saudi Aramco
steering committee

+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 24 June '12:" Iran opposition head says West must
end appeasement:, Reuters
SUBJECT: Iran opposition says West end appeasement

QUOTE:" 'a decade of appeasement and fruitless negotiations' "

FULL TEXT:VILLEPINTE, France — An Iranian dissident leader urged major
powers on Saturday[23 June] to stop appeasing Tehran and start supporting
opposition groups after the latest round of talks on Iran's nuclear
programme ended in deadlock.

Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of
Iran (NCRI), also accused the United States of dragging its heels on a
decision to remove her group from its terrorist list.

"Western countries lost this decade by providing all sorts of incentives to
the Mullahs — a decade of appeasement and fruitless negotiations," Rajavi
said ahead of a meeting of thousands of Iranian exiles on the outskirts of
Paris.

World powers and Iran failed to secure a breakthrough at talks on Tehran's
nuclear programme on June 19 and set no date for more political
negotiations, despite the threat of a new Middle East conflict if diplomacy
collapses.

The West fears Iran is working to develop an atomic bomb. Tehran says its
nuclear work is focused on generating electricity and other peaceful
projects.

The NCRI, an umbrella bloc of five opposition groups in exile that seek an
end to Shiite Muslim clerical rule in Iran, were first to expose a secret
uranium enrichment plant at Natanz in 2002.

"Stopping the Mullahs' nuclear threat is possible only through changing
[its] dictatorial regime," she said. "If one is not interested in handing
the bomb to the Mullahs, one should side with the Iranian people's
resistance to topple the regime."

Also known as the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), the group
led a guerrilla campaign against the US-backed Shah of Iran during the 1970s
that included attacks on US targets.

The United States added the group to its official list of foreign terrorist
organisations in 1997, but the group has since renounced violence.

It has mounted a legal and public relations campaign to have its terrorist
designation dropped. A US appeals court ordered Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton to decide on its fate by October 1.

"Following the June 1 ruling ... the State Department has no choice but to
delist the PMOI, unless it wants to again trample upon justice and law to
satisfy the Mullahs," Rajavi said
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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA