Secretary Clinton at the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony with His Excellency Asuncao Afonso Dos Anjos, Angolan External Relations Minister, establishing the U.S.-Angola Strategic Partnership Dialogue.
Memorandum of Understanding Signing Ceremony Establishing the U.S.-Angola Strategic Partnership Dialogue
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of StateAngolan Minister of External Relations Asuncao Afonso dos Anjos
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
July 8, 2010SECRETARY CLINTON: Well good afternoon and welcome to the State Department’s Treaty Room for today’s ceremony marking the formal launch of the U.S.-Angola Strategic Partnership Dialogue. The Minister and I agreed to this Dialogue during my visit to Angola last August, and I am delighted that he is here today to inaugurate it.
This Dialogue represents a new chapter in the relationship between Angola and the United States and reflects the many ties that already connect our nations. We are joined by representatives of several United States Government agencies as well as people from the State Department and USAID.
While today is our official launch, work has already begun. In November, our working group on energy cooperation met to outline our shared objectives, including the development of Angola’s oil and gas resources, the promotion of transparency in the oil sector, and the development of renewable energy sources. The working group on security cooperation has met and discussed issues including Angola’s growing role in regional security, its work against human trafficking, and our joint efforts to improve air and maritime safety, as well as the need to destroy excess munitions.
In April, we signed an air services arrangement, paving the way for increased commerce and air travel between our countries. And just a few weeks ago, the first meeting of the U.S.-Angola Trade and Investment Framework Agreement Council was held in Angola to discuss ways to deepen our trade and expand it beyond the oil sector.
Now, I expect we will cooperate in other priorities including, agriculture and food security, transportation, and strengthening institutional capacity. We will work together based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility. And we will expand and strengthen our relationship, as we did when I visited last August, on a new collaboration to fight HIV and AIDS, as well as a new public-private partnership to support Angola’s farmers. I had such a wonderful visit to your country last August, and I enjoyed the gracious hospitality that I experienced. And I also appreciated the opportunity to meet, of course, with the president and members of the national assembly, as well as other citizens who are committed to building and strengthening a peaceful, prosperous, democratic Angola.
So I thank all of our partners in Angola who have worked so hard to bring this occasion to a reality, and I look forward to our continuing work in the months and years ahead.
Thank you.
MINISTER DOS ANJOS: (Via interpreter.) Thank you. Thank you, very much, Madam Secretary. And thank you – for all of you for being here today. Madam Secretary Hillary Clinton has already described with very great precision and propriety all the actions that we undertook together in this year that went by since she visited.
I had an opportunity during our meeting and dialogue together to remember and to talk about all these initiatives that we took together, and to stress how it was possible in such a short period to get together and work in all these different areas that touch all areas of activity of our countries. And this is only possible when people are really committed to doing it. This is only possible when heads of state have the political will to (inaudible) it. This is only possible when there are two peoples who really want to consolidate their relationship. And this is only possible when there’s a community of interests, of ideals, of interests in solving the problems of mankind.
In that respect, our two heads of state, our two administrations, are reading from the absolute same page. Friendship and cooperation among men should not be based only in hard to grasp numbers and figures and commercial data. And cooperation should not just be aid and assistance from the developed countries to those countries in need. But however, cooperation through humanity and respect among men should be translated into proactive and dynamic actions that are undertaken together.
And this cooperation then, through this way, is changed. It transforms itself from cooperation to real partnership – partnership that will endow and permit these countries to find solutions to their own needs and problems, and actions that the countries then can take to ensure their own development and the welfare of their population. And this affirmation was one of the assumptions and one of the important parts of the speech that President Obama made in Ghana. And we entirely agree and are perfectly in tune with the speech because this is a philosophical basis, the life motif that leads us today to sign this memorandum of understanding.
We are going to take advantage of the experience and the capabilities and the capacity of a country as great as the United States of America to develop our own knowledge, to develop our own technology, to improve the education of our population, the health of our population, the infrastructure, and to promote development of our own country so that we can continue to interact between the two of us, but in the whole world and other developed – less developed countries, but brought together by one common goal: to make this world a better, better place and to promote a more (inaudible) dialogue (inaudible).
Thank you, very, very much. (Applause.)
(The protocol was signed.)
I thought I would also share these stills. The SOS is indisputably brilliant, and in these posts we see her working very hard, always with a smile unless it is a solemn occasion. So she takes me by surprise and makes me smile when she suddenly looks six-years-old as in that last picture. How cute is that?
