Hatchets buried between Angola and Portugal as relations improve
Relations between Portugal and Angola had been through a troubled patch but were now on a more stable and more positive basis said Rui Machete, the Foreign Minister of the former after meeting with José Eduardo dos Santos, president of the latter on Monday.
“The President said something that made me particular satisfied. He highlighted that a cycle had closed in which there had been one or more misunderstandings and that now everything was naturally clear and progressing very well,” Foreign Minister Rui Machete told journalists at the President Palace in Luanda.
Machete was at the beginning of a two-day visit to the Southwest African country that had ended its hitherto existing strategic partnership with Portugal by presidential announcement on 15th October 2013 with a forthcoming summit correspondingly cancelled.
In addition to studying the feasibility of fast-tracking business visas, there has already been agreement to ensure that the two countries meet at the ministerial level at least once per year.
This announcement came in the wake of Machete meeting with his peer, Georges Chikoti, and is coupled with plans to set up a joint economic observatory to better analyse the relations ongoing between the two Portuguese language speaking states.
Furthermore, the pair of Foreign Ministers also agreed that Luanda would host a business forum event to assess the state of affairs in terms of trade and investment relations between the two countries with the forum slated to happen before the end of the first quarter of this year.
