Meeting to discuss reconstructing Ninewa

Ninewa-Meeting NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: A two-day meeting was held on Monday at the Ninewa province’s building in central Mosul attended by officials from the local and federal government to map out a study to reconstruct the province. “We came today to Ninewa representing 11 services ministries in Baghdad to discuss problems and obstacles facing the reconstruction operation in the province,” Qahtan al-Junabi, the deputy prime minister’s adviser, who led the Baghda’d delegation, told IraqiNews.com. For his part, Alex Laskares, leader of the reconstruction team in Ninewa, told IraqiNews.com “they seek to improve the condition of services and to start both reconstruction and setting up projects.” “Today’ meeting witnessed the establishment the Mosul Reconstruction Operations Center (MROC) which will supervise such meetings and will organize and plan the projects,” he pointed out. “The center will include representatives of the ministries in Baghdad, departments in Mosul and reconstruction engineers as well as the U.S. army,” he said. The meeting was attended by Head of the Ninewa provincial Council Hesham al-Hamadani, Governor Duraid Kashmoula, and other local officials. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. The original city of Mosul stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient biblical city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial areas on both banks, with five bridges linking the two sides. Despite having an amount of Kurdish population, it does not form part of the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). There are different communities in Mosul like Christians, Shiites and Kurds along with a Sunni majority. The fabric Muslin, long manufactured here, is named for this city. Another historically important product of the area is Mosul marble. The city is also a historic center for the Nestorian Christianity of the Assyrians, containing the tombs of several Old Testament prophets such as Jonah, Yunus in Arabic, and Nahum. SH (S)/SR 1