Angolan President Starts Official Visit to Cuba

The Angolan President, José Eduardo dos Santos, is paying since Tuesday an official visit to Havana, capital of Cuba, aimed to reinforce the relations of bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

"I am coming to Cuba to study with our Cuban brothers, particularly with the President Raul Castro, all possible ways to strengthen more these relations. Angola and Cuba are sister countries with long tradition of struggle. We are here to cooperate and improve more and more these relations so as to have greater incidence of the life our peoples ", declared the Angolan Head of State when arriving in Havana.

From Brasilia, Brazil, where he also paid an official visit, the President's agenda reserves, according to its scheduled programme, a visit to the special development zone of Mariel (one of the priorities of the Cuban government to attract foreign capital, technology, substitute imports and generate exports and new sources of employment in order to transform it into a motor force of the Caribbean country's economy), where he will be briefed on the functioning of this social infrastructure.

In Havana, the Angolan Head of State will also lay a wreath at the monument of the national hero "Jose Marti", followed by the highest point of the official visit, to be marked by the meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro.

The cooperative relations between the two countries are dated back to more than 30 years, with the primacy of the Education and Health sectors.

This cooperation came to be extended later to the fields of culture, sports, industry, and civil engineering construction, shipping, fishing, geology and mining, oil, tourism, radio and television, among other areas.