Rice Remarks With Portuguese Foreign Minister

Remarks With Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Signing of U.S.-Portugal Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Bilateral Instruments
Washington, DC
July 14, 2005

1:30 p.m. EDT

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would very much like to welcome my colleague, the Foreign Minister of Portugal. Mr. Freitas, it's wonderful to have you here. We have met before at the NATO meetings and at the meetings on Brussels, so it's very good to have you here in Washington. Portugal and the United States, of course, have long and deep relations and we look forward to continuing those.

Today, we are going to have an opportunity to sign an agreement that really moves forward our criminal law cooperation. I think it will make a very big difference in our work together in counterterrorism and law enforcement. We saw, in the terrible bombing in London, that we, of course, have a lot of work to do. There are people who want to destroy our way of life. And the need for good allies and friends to work together in a completely coherent and cooperative way is very evident there.

And so I want to thank the Minister for being here. This is a particularly good time for us to review the broad cooperation that we have in counterterrorism. We will talk about the Middle East. We will talk about NATO. But thank you very much for being here. Welcome.

FOREIGN MINISTER DO AMARL: Thank you, Mrs. Secretary of State. I'm delighted to be here again in Washington, at your invitation, to resume a good tradition of annual visits between the Foreign Ministers of the United States and Portugal, which have been interrupted for different reasons since 2001. I hope that we can resume that good practice and I already will invite you to come next year to Lisbon.

We are happy to have concluded these negotiations on the treaty on extradition, which is part of a broad policy of the fight against world terrorism, which is a cause that unites all civilized countries of the world. And Portugal has always supported this policy since the very beginning.

Of course, we will also have the opportunity to discuss some important points of the international agenda and some points also of our bilateral agenda, which is good, has no difficult problems. But we think, as you suggested to me in Vilnius, that we will be able to move forward and discuss new ideas.

Thank you very much.

MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State of the United States and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Portuguese Republic will now sign the Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Agreements. 2005/700

Released on July 14, 2005

ENDS

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