MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cameron in Paraguay points to environment and sustainability associations opportunities with UK

Lord Cameron and President Santiago Peña during a meeting with media at the Lopez Palace in Asunción

Lord David Cameron, during his historic visit to Paraguay, the first time a British Foreign Secretary visits the country in 171 years of diplomatic relations, pointed out the UK's interest in strengthening relations and the opportunity for environment and sustainability associations in the framework of shared commitments, as reported by the local agency news IP.

After meeting with Paraguayan president Santiago Peña at the Lopez Palace in Asunción, Cameron participated in a media conference without questions, and outlined “the many opportunities to build a real solid association on shared values into the future, working jointly in environment issues as well as addressing the many global problems”

Cameron underlined the position of Paraguay regarding “Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine” as an example of shared values and the “excellent” discussions on the Middle East situation, many issues “in a region where we can jointly cooperate”.

Paraguay has a significant percentage of Arab and Palestinian influential population.

President Santiago Peña and his foreign minister Ramirez Lezcano said “this visit represents the strengthening of relations between our countries and an opportunity to advance in a raft of issues dear to the very close links we are building with UK”

Minister Ramirez ratified that with Cameron they made an “assessment of the global situation” and outlined the “coincidence” between Asuncion and London is hot issues such as the Russia/Ukraine war, the situation in Israel and Palestine and “other conflicts” in the world, referred to China's global advance.

Cameron later twitted UK's commitment to strongly support Ukraine, defend democracy and human rights in the whole world“.

Regarding environment issues, the leaders discussed the ”significant contribution” of Paraguay particularly in the generation of sustainable energy. Paraguay shares with Brazil the gigantic Itaipu hydroelectric dam which supplies Brazil with 30% of its power. In the meeting the possibility of green hydrogen and green ammonia, with UK investments and technology were also considered.

Finally since this semester Paraguay is chairing Mercosur relations between the South American trade block and UK were considered, emphasizing the need to increase bilateral trade. Paraguay exports to UK add up to 120 million dollars and 65 million dollars of imports .

Cameron spent the night in Asunción and Wednesday morning flew to Rio de Janeiro for the G20 foreign ministers summit, this year chaired by Brazil, where he will be meeting US State Department Secretary Antony Blinken and Russia's Sergey Lavrov. China's Wang Yi is not attending the meeting but will be represented by his deputy, Ma Zhaoxu.