JEDDAH: Jeddah's downtown historical center Balad will be a World Heritage Site within two years, according to President of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) Prince Sultan bin Salman.
The prince, who is also deputy chairman of the committee for the development of Jeddah's historical district, was addressing a committee meeting to monitor the development of the project. Jeddah Gov. Prince Mishaal bin Majed, Mayor Hani Abu Ras and Deputy Mayor Khaled Aqeel attended the meeting.
They discussed topics such as the resubmission of the application to register Jeddah in UNESCO's list of world heritage sites.
The decisions and recommendations of the meeting included redefining the locations for registration and identifying the surrounding regions to be protected, exploring the possibility of starting an office to develop historical Jeddah under the municipality and speeding up of formalities to obtain government funding for the project in addition to starting archaeological excavations of the district for one year.
The prince said the meeting was held at the directive of Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, who is the chairman of the supreme committee to develop historical Jeddah.
Prince Sultan also called for more cooperation from private and public sectors to ensure the success of the project.
The prince said on an earlier occasion that definitive steps were being taken to maintain the heritage of Jeddah following reports that UNESCO had rejected Saudi Arabia's application to make Balad the Kingdom's third World Heritage Site.
"It is not possible that Jeddah will lose its historical center," the prince said at the time, clarifying that the application was not rejected but withdrawn in order to refurbish the old downtown area in the aftermath of recent floods before nominating the site again.
The Kingdom had presented applications to register three sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The first two sites, Madain Saleh in Madinah province and Al-Diriyah (the fort in Riyadh) were successfully registered.
SCTA presented the preliminary application for the inclusion of Jeddah to the World Heritage Committee in the summer of 2010.
© Arab News 2011
