The Finance Committee for the Joint Construction of a Particle Accelerator for Israel and the Arab Countries Met Last Week in Amman
The Finance Committee dealing with the construction of the SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) Particle Accelerator met in Amman, on November 7 and 8, 2005.
The committee discussed the project’s budget and the manner in which the budgetary expenses would be divided during 2006 among the various countries that are members of the project’s permanent council.
The committee reached agreements on a variety of subjects, and its recommendations will be submitted to the High Committee which is to meet at the end of December to approve the SESAME budget for 2006.
The member countries are Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
Additional countries that are in contact with SESAME representatives and who may become a part of the joint initiative during 2006 include Morocco, Oman, Libya, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus. The project was approved by the Israel Foreign Ministry during 2003, and until now Israel’s part in its financing has come to approximately two hundred thousand dollars.
Israel’s representative, Eyal Epstein of the Ministry of Finance's Budget Department, was present at the Finance Committee’s sessions at the Amman meeting. Professors Eliezer Rabinovici and Moshe Pasternak of Hebrew University will be Israel’s representatives at the meeting of the High Committee in Jordan in December.
The accelerator building, which is in the stages of final construction, was built at Al-Balqa University, approximately 30 kilometers from Amman. After its expected completion at the beginning of 2006, the accelerator will be placed inside it. The project is expected to be completed in 2009.
SESAME will be the largest and most advanced particle accelerator in the Middle East. It will be operated with the advice and direction of the United States and the European Union, and experiments will be conducted in it in a variety of scientific areas. Unlike the current situation, Israeli scientists will have quick access to a large particle accelerator. They will also have the ability to work together with scientists from countries that are partners in the project.
A number of guiding principles were established during the Finance Committee’s meetings last week – the most important of which was the division of payments among the member countries. The council resolved that payments would reflect a progressive scale based on the respective countries’ finance situations. Each country’s financial ability was determined in accordance with a variety of economic parameters, including GDP, GDP per capita, price levels, etc.
The idea of constructing a particle accelerator in the Middle East was first broached in 1997 by a group of scientists headed by Italian scientist Sergio Fubini. Their discussions led to the contribution of a decommissioned German particle accelerator, the BESSY 1. The accelerator has been upgraded and its strength has been doubled in order to enable the establishment of the joint scientific project in the Middle East.
