Minister for Foreign Affairs Emma Bonino met today in Rome with Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Elias Josè Jaua Milano, who is in Rome with President of the Republic NicolásMaduro.They discussed collaboration between Italy and that Latin American country in the sectors of industry, tourism and air safety.
Minister Bonino expressed great appreciation to her colleague for President Maduro’s choice of Italy as the first leg of a European tour that follows on the recent Presidential elections, bearing witness to the highly favourable relationship between the two countries. “We are sure”, Minister Bonino asserted, “that the Italian community that has contributed so much to Venezuela’s social, political and economic formation and growth will continue to do its part”.
The two ministers also agreed that it would be advisable for the next Italo-Venezuelan Cooperation Council, scheduled for the first half of 2014, to be co-chaired by the two nations’ foreign ministers. They then discussed the advantages of further intensifying bilateral industrial cooperation, particularly with regard to infrastructure, where Italian firms have long been engaged in the railway sector. The Venezuelan minister then reiterated his country’s interest in the Italian industrial cluster model, along with the specific desire to increase cooperation in the agri-industry sector. Minister Jaua underscored how deeply Venezuela is counting on friends such as Italy to meet the challenge of industrialisation.
Finally, Minister Bonino raised the question of flight safety for tourists in Venezuela, and her hopes regarding pursuance of the Venezuelan government’s much-appreciated commitment to the search for two missing planes, one in 2008 and the other in January 2013, which was carrying Italian tourists.
