A British Member of Parliament (MP) has lauded Qatar and its leadership for bringing parliamentarians together in Doha to discuss global issues and hold bilateral talks with other delegates.
“We are superbly grateful to the Qatari government and His Highness the Amir for stepping in to ensure that our conference did take place,” Nigel Evans, an MP for 27 years under the Conservative Party, told reporters on the sidelines of the 140th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly at Sheraton Doha yesterday.
The conference, which opened on April 6 and runs until April 10, have started tackling several issues of vital importance: climate change, democracy, and human rights, among others.
Evans thanked Qatar providing one-of-its-kind facilities such as “a high-grade hotel” like Sheraton Doha for the delegates to meet, hold panel discussions and meetings, and have bilateral talks on the sidelines.
“Incredibly courteous people and the facilities are superb. Sheraton is actually ideal of what we do, you got a number of what they call presidential rooms,” he said. “Along the way we were able to have bilaterals with different countries such as Ukrain and Armenia.”
“Just Argentina and we’ve got lots of bilaterals where we can talk about issues that are of common concerns to us,” the British MP added.
According to Evans, Qatar announced it is ready to host the conference days after it was cancelled in Buenos Aires in Argentina.
The agenda, he said it was aimed mainly at facilitating dialogue with different countries from various regions. 
“We had a bilateral with the North Koreans, and we were actually quite surprised they were blond talking, they were diplomatic, and we discussed the major issues in a very civilised way,” Evans noted.
“Within the Middle East and within Africa they do things differently to us, and even within Europe, and the only major country that is not represented here is the US,” he said. “In the 1980s they decided to leave because they were fed up being criticised by countries within this orgs.”
Some of the items yesterday included a forum of Young Parliamentarians of the IPU, a general debate on “Parliaments as platforms to enhance education for peace, security and the rule of law”, Standing Committee on Peace and International Security, and various presentations, including the start of drafting resolution on “The role of fair and free trade and investment in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially regarding economic equality, sustainable infrastructure, industrialisation and innovation.”
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