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16 May 2014 The United Nations and the European Union have forged an agreement today to fund the restoration of cultural heritage in Timbuktu that was destroyed by extremists after fighting broke out in 2012 between Malian Government forces and Tuareg rebels.

With 500,000 euros provided by the European Union, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will coordinate the reconstruction of destroyed mausoleums, the rehabilitation of mosques and private libraries, as well as ancient manuscript conservation projects. Local personnel will also be trained to ensure lasting preservation.

Timbuktu was an economic, intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa during the citys golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova welcomed the support extended to Mali and the heritage reconstruction project by the European Union and other donors.

The agreement signed today shows that we are on track, she stated in a news release. Two mausoleums have now been rebuilt and this new agreement comes at an opportune moment to speed up work underway and ensure that the people of Mali can reclaim heritage that is essential to their identity and that can contribute to reconciliation.

This is vital for Mali and is important for the rest of the world because World Heritage is common to us all, she said.

Fourteen of the 16 mausoleums of Timbuktu inscribed on UNESCOs World Heritage List were destroyed by armed groups during the conflict. The manuscripts of Mali constitute a unique documentary collection that bears testimony to the history of Africa and of humanity as a whole.

During the conflict, more than 4,000 of the 40,000 manuscripts kept at the Ahmed Baba Institute were lost. Some were burned or stolen, while more than 10,000 remain in a critical condition. Local communities secretly transferred more than 300,000 manuscripts to the capital, Bamako. They are now conserved in conditions that are not optimal for their safeguarding, according to UNESCO.

The heritage project will be led in cooperation with the Malian Ministry of Culture, Higher Education and Scientific Research, with logistical support from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).

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Mali: UN, European Union team up to restore Timbuktus cultural heritage

The European Union is considering raising the pressure on the United States in the world's largest trade dispute by challenging tax breaks that encouraged planemaker Boeing to keep production of its latest jet in Washington state, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The potential move would open a tense new phase in the decade-old formal trade dispute over aircraft industry aid, as Brussels and Washington argue about whether they have complied with rulings by the World Trade Organization, which in turn could set the tone for sanctions.

Both the EU and United States claimed victory when the WTO ruled between 2010 and 2012 that billions of dollars of support for Boeing and European rival Airbus, in a pair of cases spanning thousands of pages but lacking a final resolution.

But new aircraft developments by both companies have sparked fresh disputes over whether the two sides have obeyed those WTO rulings or simply continued aiding their industries as before.

The United States says European governments ignored the global trade court by agreeing to lend money to Airbus for the development of its new A350 jet, even though an internal row between Airbus and Germany has blocked part of that support.

Now, European officials are said to be getting ready to hit back by questioning $8.7 billion of tax breaks from Washington state and the issue may be discussed by ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Spain at next week's Berlin Airshow.

European Commission trade spokesman John Clancy called the Washington measure "the largest targeted state tax incentive for the civil aerospace industry in U.S. history."

"The EU is very concerned about the extension of these subsidies which indeed figure - originally and as extended - in the EU's WTO case on subsidies to Boeing, but it declines to comment further on the ongoing litigation," Clancy said by email.

The latest maneuvers risk deepening an already bitter industrial and trade fight between the two planemakers as the 406-seat Boeing 777X and a large version of the A350 compete for billions of dollars of sales from around the end of the decade.

Washington's state legislature agreed the tax breaks in November as Boeing considered whether to build the newest version of successful 777 wide-body jet in the Seattle area.

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EU may challenge $8.7B U.S. tax breaks in Boeing-Airbus trade dispute: sources

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