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Chilean President Michelle Bachelet visits T&T

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet

PORT SPAIN
Petroleumworldtt.com 02 22 2010

Chile’s outgoing President Michelle Bachelet arrives in Trinidad and Tobago tomorrow evening on an official State visit that will see her paying a courtesy call on President George Maxwell Richards late tomorrow night.

Bachelet will meet Richards at President’s House, St Ann’s, at 10 p.m. tomorrow after she holds a press conference at the nearby Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, at 9 p.m.

While the events have been planned at an unusually late time in comparison to most of the past visits of Heads of State or Government to this country, the schedule is apparently meant to accommodate Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s trip to Mexico which began yesterday and ends tomorrow.

Bachelet , who is Chile’s first female President and is set to demit office next month, will leave this country sometime after midnight on Wednesday.

Foreign Affairs Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, who is accompanying Manning on the Mexico trip, announced Bachelet’s State visit in a statement issued by the Government Information Services Ltd (GISL) last week, in which she noted that the Chilean President and her family ’were torture victims’ in the 1970s under the rule of Chile’s then president Augusto Pinochet ’with her father (Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martinez) dying in prison’.

Before becoming Chile’s President, Bachelet had served as the country’s first female Health Minister and Defence Minister and arrives in this country with a high approval rating from the Chilean public.

Gopee-Scoon said Manning sent Bachelet a letter on May 18, 2009, inviting her to visit this country.

May 19, 2009 was the last day of the three-day Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain last April which Bachelet had attended.

Gopee-Scoon said Bachelet accepted the invitation and during her State visit, ’the Government would be interested in having discussions regarding the negotiation of a partial trade agreement’.

Last year, Trinidad and Tobago began shipping liquefied natural gas to Chile.

Story from Trinidad Express

Trinidad Express
Monday, February 22nd 2010

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