3 March 2008
Havana — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza is paying a three day official visit to Cuba, at the invitation of Cuban President Raul Castro to redefine the priorities FOR cooperation between the two countries.
Raul Castro was elected by the Cuban National Assembly last week to replace his brother, Fidel Castro, who resigned because of ill health after governing the country since 1959.
Guebuza is thus the first head of state to visit Cuba since the election of Raul Castro.
Among the objectives of the visit, Guebuza is to discuss issues that include the technical assistance that Cuba has been providing to Mozambique in areas such as education, health, science and technology, youth and sports, and also to ensure that Cuba will continue granting scholarships and training to Mozambican students.
Cuba hosts the largest community of Mozambican students abroad, who are receiving training in a variety of areas. Hundreds of Cuban doctors are working in Mozambican hospitals under the cooperation agreements between the two countries.
This cooperation is also to be extended to areas such as tourism, agriculture and others that are of particular interest to Mozambique.
Cuba has a strong tourism industry, receiving more than two million tourists a year from all across the world - even from the United States, despite the embargo against Cuba vindictively imposed by successive US administrations for almost half a century.
These sanctions against Cuba may have made life difficult for the Cuban people, but they have come nowhere near bringing down the Cuban government, and have been regularly condemned by the vast majority of member states of the United Nations.
At the last UN General Assembly vote demanding the lifting of the embargo, in 2006, only three countries sided with the US - Israel, and the tiny Pacific states of Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Cuba is also producing antiretrovirals and is also advanced in the area of biotechnology, that has been earning about 400 million US dollars a year to the country. These are two areas of considerable interest to the Mozambican government.
Guebuza's delegation includes Foreign Minister Alcinda Abreu, and the Ministers of Health, Ivo Garrido, of Science and Technology, Venancio Massingue, of Industry and Trade, Antonio Fernando, and of Education and Culture, Aires Aly.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
