MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile-UK advance in science cooperation

“The United Kingdom, and the European Union are well aware that Chile's priority for the coming ten years is to advance cooperation in science and technology and this was the main purpose of today's interview with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw”, revealed Monday Chilean Foreign Affairs minister Ignacio Walker in London.

Mr. Walker spent fifty minutes with Foreign Secretary Straw following on last week's meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chilean president Ricardo Lagos who during his official visit to Britain was also received by the Queen in Buckingham Palace.

"Our heads of government committed us to advance in the fields of science and technology, since we have a free trade, political and cooperation association agreement with the European Union, which opens a whole new area of possibilities for our universities research and development areas", said Mr. Walker.

Further on he underlined the excellent political, trade and diplomatic relations with Britain, which last year totalled 1,2 billion US dollars in bilateral trade.

Another issue in the agenda was the situation in Haiti, where Chile is insisting in a greater British and European Union involvement to help put the Caribbean island, and one of the poorest countries in the world, back on track.

Minister Walker is scheduled to hold several meetings in London among which with David Triesman, Lord Triesman of Tottenham, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for relations with Latin America and with the Chilean-British Inter-parliamentarian Friendship Group and will give a conference titled "Chilean Foreign Policy and our vision of the world" at the University of London.