Table of Contents

PREFACE
Rui Chancerelle de Machete
President of the Executive Council
The Luso-American Foundation is very pleased to publish this
new report by Dr. Ian Lesser. The analysis and policy implications
offered here are the result of research in Europe, the
U.S. and North Africa, and are a product of the author’s stay
in Lisbon as a Luso-American Foundation Fellow from October
2005 through March 2006. This work supports the Foundation’s
continued interest in north-south cooperation, and is
a natural extension of FLAD’s longstanding involvement with
Mediterranean issues, through its own activities, project grants,
and as co-chair of the European Foundation Centre’s Trans-
Mediterranean Civil Society Dialogue.
With relations between the Muslim world and the West in
periodic crisis, and with policy toward the “Broader Middle
East and North Africa” at the center of transatlantic debates,
it is a particularly timely moment for a discussion of challenges
and opportunities in the southern Mediterranean from a Portuguese
and Euro-Atlantic vantage point. North-South relations
on Europe’s periphery have surely moved to the center of strategic
concern on both sides of the Atlantic. This report makes
an important contribution to our understanding of issues that
will be critical in the years ahead.
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