ARTICLE - COLOMBIA, CURACAO MEETING

UPDATE ON THE WORKING MEETING WITH COLOMBIA AND CURACAO
(Haiti Libre) -

The Colombian Vice-President, Angelino Garzón, General Oscar Naranjo, Director of the Colombian National Police, and the Prime Minister of Curacao, Gerrit F. Schotte, who was accompanied by a group of businessmen and investors, arrived yesterday in Port-au-Prince for an official visit. Following the first working meeting with government officials, Laurent Lamothe, Foreign Affairs Minister and the Prime Minister-designate gave an update :

"...we just had a meeting to strengthen Haiti's relations with Colombia and Curacao, which came with a group of investors in the fields of energy and waste management. They also come with people who will provide us with technical assistance in our reconstruction program of popular neighborhoods, as we had asked them during our last visit.

We told them that it is important for us to see how things are done in other countries, [...] This is why Angelino Garzón, Colombian Vice-President came, to share what they were able to accomplish in the management and in the improvement of popular neighborhoods in Colombia. Medellin has many popular neighborhoods, residents lived in difficult conditions. With their experience, they managed to bring these neighborhoods to another level. That's why we have a unit that works on the renovation of popular neighborhoods, especially Jalousie. We will send a team in Colombia to see how they did it, we will work with various partners, we will seek solutions for our people [...] A Commission will visit Colombia for that, and we will also create a bilateral commission Curacao-Haiti, for a first work on the visa issue, so that Haitian traders who travel in Curacao, can travel with fewer problems. We also asked the same thing of Colombia [...]

The other important point that we discussed, concerns the cooperation in the field of security with the National Police [...] we have asked General Oscar Naranjo, the Director of the Colombian National Police, to work with the Director of the National Police of Haiti, and especially with the Secretary of State for Public Security, Mr Réginald Delva [...] Colombia has one of the best anti-kidnapping units in the world, and they will give us a technical assistance on the issue, so that we are able to move forward.

Overall that's it, they will establish a Joint Commission which will follow up on all these issues, and we will do the same; for Colombia to follow up all the files we discussed today [...]

We also asked Colombia to grant scholarships to Haitian students, which they already do. We asked them to continue this program, because the Haitian youth deserves this and we need this training abroad for our future leaders [...]

The 6th Summit of the Americas, taking place in Colombia on 14 and 15 April 2012, every President of America will be there, including Barack Obama; every President of the region, [...] and we will follow up with the Heads of States, when we will be at this 6th Summit [...]"