Representatives of the members of SESAME (Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey) met at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on 28-29 May for the 22nd meeting of the Council. They were welcomed by the Director General of IAEA, Yukiya Amano, and the President of the SESAME Council, Chris Llewellyn Smith, who was assisted by the two co-Vice Presidents, Seyed Mahmoud Reza Aghamiri (Iran) and Mohamed Tarek Hussein (Egypt).
This was the first Council meeting in which China participated as an Observer. Other Observer countries are France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
While the SESAME Council was meeting in Vienna, the European Commission (EC) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced in a joint press conference in Brussels that the EC has agreed to provide €5 million to fund construction of the magnets for the new main ring, which will be led by CERN with support from SESAME. During the Council meeting, Dr Fernando Ferroni, President, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, announced that the Italian budget for 2013, which is awaiting final approval by the Parliamentary Commission, contains a €1 million contribution to SESAME. With the voluntary contributions of $5 million each being provided by Iran, Israel, Jordan and Turkey, and the EC and Italian funding, SESAME has almost all the funds required for the facility to come into operation in 2015 with four 'day-one' beamlines.
The Council elected Mr Tahir Saeed (Pakistan) as Chair of the Finance Committee in replacement of the current Chair, Dr Salman M. Salman (Palestinian Authority), whose term of office had come to an end.
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