Serious business by the blue sea

The main event of the day was the opening speeches by Presidents Mubarak and Bush, and King Abdullah. The entire Forum gathered in the main hall to listen to Mubarak and Abdullah, who spoke well.

There was then a pause before Bush appeared, and in the middle of this five-minute moment of quiet, a group of senior Saudi delegates walked through the seated crowd to the door.

This gave rise to delightful speculation along the lines of 'Saudis boycott Bush speech'. I was interested afterwards to find that many others had the same thought, but on investigation it turned out that nothing of the sort had happened and they simply had other things to do. A valuable lesson in how rumours can start.

Different styles

Three different leaders with three very different styles. Mubarak was very confident, full of detail, and well aware of his years of experience and the need to involve the many parties to the Middle East. Abdullah spoke of the young generation and the future Middle East, for which there is all to play for. Bush spoke with a bizarre certainty that he knew exactly what was right, and left no room for debate in his view. Yet he is the president with some world-scale holes in his record.

No diving, please

Sharm Al Shaikh turns out to be a wonderful sea resort with dark blue seas, warm breezes, and no humidity. In the full moon last night many delegates to the Forum went out to their various restaurants to eat, and watch the moon light spreading over the calm sea.

Today I found out that despite the obvious delights of the sea, the unfortunate tourists caught up in Sharm have been told that no diving is allowed till Wednesday, when the Forum is over. This will not affect us in the Forum, since we are all spending our time in the Convention Centre.

At least we can sleep easy, knowing that no underwater terrorists will be making their way through the world-standard coral and fish to attack the Forum.

Charming co-chairperson

The charming Japanese lady, Yuriko Koike, stood out amongst all the other co-chair persons when they all gathered for a joint session explaining what issues they thought the Forum should concentrate on over the next few days.

It was not that she was the only Japanese and the only woman on the stage, but that she spoke excellent Arabic, to the astonishment of the chair of the session, the WEF's managing director, Borge Brende.

Koike made her opening points clearly and effectively, as the surprised non-Arab audience scrambled for translating headsets. After paying her Arab hosts the compliment of using their language, she switched to English and earned a massive round of applause for her well thought out and fluent introduction.