Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares& Mrs. Hala Fares flew to the USA to sponsor, at Tufts University in Boston, the opening of the Issam Fares Center for Middle Eastern Studies and to deliver a conference with former American President Bill Clinton on common future in the frame of the annual Issam Fares Lecture Series at Tufts.

In the frame of his trip, Mr.& Mrs. Fares were also the guests of honor of the annual dinner banquet thrown by the Organization of St. Andrew the Apostle at Hilton Hotel in New York, in a remarkable ceremony during which the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew honored Senior former US President George Bush and his wife Mrs. Barbara Bush.

The dinner was an occasion for the Fareses to meet President Bush and Patriarch Bartholomew and to discuss the prevailing developments in Lebanon and the Middle East.