A new regional forum to be held next year aims to put the spotlight on water technology challenges facing the Middle East.

The Water Middle East 2003, the international forum for water technology, will be held in Bahrain in October next year and bring together experts from the region.

The forum will be organised jointly by Bahrain's Commerce and Industry Ministry and Nurnberg Global Fairs under the patronage of Water and Electricity Minister Shaikh Abdullah bin Salman bin Khalid Al Khalifa, with the Euro Institute for Information and Technology Transfer in Environmental Protection (EITEP) as technical consultant.

Assistant undersecretary for foreign trade and promotion at the ministry, Shaikh Daij bin Salman Al Khalifa, and Nurnberg managing director Herta Krausmann reached the agreement to stage the forum in Bahrain.

Water Middle East which is scheduled to become an annual event, will focus on water catchment, production and preservation technologies, storage and distribution, recovery, recycling and treatment, wastewater management and sewage plants, agricultural irrigation systems, chemical supplies, filtering and membranes, water storage systems and technical services for the water industry.

The trade fair will be complemented by conferences, workshops and seminars dealing with specific market requirements, products and technologies.

''Bahrain is ideally located to host such a forum as it is in the centre of a vast arid region stretching from north Africa across the Near East and Middle East into western Asia with a total population of over 250 million,'' says Krausmann.

''The growing water shortage in many countries of the region due to sinking ground water tables and increasing ground water salinity calls for increasingly sophisticated water production technologies to satisfy the immense additional requirements caused by the uncurbed population explosion and the extensive diversification into new industries.

''Many of the waterworks constructed in the Gulf at the start of the oil boom will also have to be refurbished in the coming years. Furthermore, outdated water distribution systems and most wastewater treatment and sewage plants will need replacement or modernisation within the next two decades. Looking at the strategic importance of water and the huge market requirements, this is the ideal time to establish a truly international annual forum for water technology.''