Opening remarks by Deputy Foreign Minister Sue Van Der Merwe and Mr Angel Lossada, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdon of Spain at the Fifth Annaul SA-Spanish Consultations, Friday, 21 November 2008, Pretoria

Remarks by Deputy Minister Van Der Merwe

Your Excellency Mr Angel Lossada, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Spain;
Members of the Spanish Delegation;
Your Excellencies
Members of the South African Delegation;

It is my pleasure to warmly welcome such a distinguished delegation from Spain, a valued bilateral partner and a country with which we have much in common. I am particularly happy to welcome Secretary of State Lossada on his first visit to our beautiful country and I trust that you may have the opportunity to return for a more leisurely stay in future.  

Your Excellency, this is already the 5th annual consultation between our two countries and I strongly believe we have made significant progress in strengthening and consolidating our bilateral relationship through these annual discussions.

Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in December 2000, we had an inaugural meeting in Madrid in June 2003. Four more consultations have followed in the years 2004 to 2007, alternately in Spain and South Africa.

Apart from the substantive talks at a political level, our engagements have been enhanced by the discussions held between representatives of the various technical departments from South Africa and Spain. To date, seven of our departments have participated in these talks with a view to strengthening their cooperation and launching relevant joint projects which could add value to our bilateral relationship.

I also note that we now have a Joint SA-Spanish Defence Committee which deals with all matters of cooperation in the defence domain. South Africa hosted a successful inaugural meeting of this committee on 31 October 2007 and our colleagues look forward to visiting you in Spain next year for the next Defence Committee meeting.

During our last consultation in Madrid on 16 and 17 July 2007, we reaffirmed the strategic partnership between South Africa and Spain and reiterated our shared commitment to the values of democracy, good governance, peace and security and development on the African continent.

We expressed ourselves satisfied that relations between our countries and peoples continue to strengthen and grow in all areas. We held wide-ranging discussions on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues and found a remarkable degree of convergence in our respective positions, particularly on many of the crucial global issues confronting the international community. I think here of issues such as peace, security and development in Africa, support to NEPAD, effective multilateralism and reform of the UN system and the Middle East Peace Process.  

Moreover, at a more practical level, we envisaged increased high-level visits to each other’s countries to enhance our bilateral relationship. In this regard, I wish to repeat the invitation which Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma issued during her official visit on 5 June to her Spanish counterpart, Mr Miguel Angel Moratinos, to visit South Africa at a mutually convenient time. Of course, we would be similarly honoured to receive a visit to our country and region by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriques Zapatero.

As you well know, South Africa will be hosting both the Confederations Cup in 2009 and the football World Cup in 2010. It would be our great pleasure to welcome the European champions (Spain) to our shores next year and it is our sincere hope that South Africa and Spain will cooperate closely on the many tourism and business opportunities arising from both these prestigious international events. As one of its planned marketing events, our Embassy will host a special focus on the Confederations Cup and World Cup at the FITUR Tourism Trade Fair in Madrid in January next year.

In this regard, I wish to express a word of appreciation for the Spanish language training which your country has been providing to South African tour guides. This will most certainly strengthen our capacity to welcome visitors from Spain and Latin America in their mother tongue.

Your Excellency, once again welcome to South Africa and I trust that our deliberations will be both successful and fruitful. May I express the wish that we will both put special efforts into implementing the proposals and agreements which emanate from this Fifth Annual Consultation between South Africa and Spain.

Viva Espana!  Long live South Africa!

I thank you.

REMARKS BY MR LOSADA

Deputy Minister, Ambassadors, members of both Spanish and South African delegations. It is a pleasure for me to be here today in South Africa on this first visit but not the last one, for sure because as you have mentioned in your opening speech, the relations between Spain and South Africa are strategic relations.

I think that the size of both delegations reflect the weight that we can put in our mutual bilateral relations. We have established for these consultations three main working groups in practically all the aspects of these relations.

I hope and I am sure, looking at the results already of the communiqué, that these two days have been put to very good use. We have new initiatives in all fields. We have new proposals for cooperation and not only bilaterally but also in addressing issues of common interest and global issues where we can together make a significant contribution.

For Spain Africa was for a long time a forgotten dimension of its foreign policy. It has changed in the past four years in a very intensive way. Africa is now Spain’s foreign policy priority. And in that light when we look at Africa as apriority, of course South Africa occupies a central role for us. That is why we do not see these consultations that take place once a year as routine but rather as opportunity that we have each year to build stronger and more competitive relations; and an opportunity as well to exchange and to see how we can approach global issues.

We are facing, both countries of course, the consequences of a huge financial crisis in the world. Both countries participated in the negotiations that took place in Washington to address this issue.

We have to confront regional issues and the stability in the world.

Thank you very much.

Issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001

21 November 2008