and her Qatari counterpart, Mr Mohammed Al-Rumaihi, Cape Town
4 February 2009
Deputy Minister Sue van der Merwe
Firstly, I welcomed His Excellency Assistant Minister Ramaihi here to South
Africa for our first dialogue between Qatar and South Africa at this level. We
have a very good relationship, diplomatically and politically between Qatar and
South Africa. The discussions today focused on, among other things, the
outcomes of the visit of the former President Mbeki to Qatar last year at the
invitation of his Highness Amir of Qatar who had visited South Africa in
2002.
During our discussions today we agreed to further strengthen our
relationship and in particular our economic relationship. We discussed our
interest in securing investments from Qatar. We discussed an invitation which
we have extended to Qatari Chamber of Commerce to visit South Africa to explore
some of these investment opportunities.
We also discussed co-operation in the areas of Health, Defence and Science
and Technology. We have proposals for the Qatari government regarding
participation and cooperation with our square kilometre area project. We are
putting for that enormous telescope and we would like to look to the Qatari
government for their expertise in the area of astronomy.
We also discussed energy issues, our company Sasol has a major joint venture
with the Qatari company in regard to gas liquid issues and we discussed as
well. We also had an opportunity to discuss issues of mutual concern on the
African Continent including Somalia, Darfur a project in which the Qatari
government is very involved. And we have also discussed Middle East and our
respective approaches to the difficulties that the Middle Eastern countries
particularly Israel and Palestine are facing at the moment.
So I think it is just to say we had well, rounded very in-depth discussions
on all these issues. We have decided that we will carry on an annual basis to
have these meetings at this level. So I think I could hand back to you to give
a general round up of our discussions today.
Assistant Minister Al âRumaihi
Thank you very much.
The relations between South Africa and the State of Qatari are very
important for both countries and the co-operation between the two governments
is at very high level. We were very successful in the past with our economical
project and in our cooperation at the international level. Today we discussed
issues of high interest to both countries bilaterally and on multilateral
level.
We discussed matters about the situation in Middle East, issues of United
Nations, issues around Africa and issues of interest between the government of
Qatar and government of South Africa especially at the level of Culture,
Education, Trade, Science and Technology, as Her Excellency just clarified that
we will carry on with our meetings on an annual basis and we will continue
until our next meeting to make high progress on whatever we discussed today
with our friends from the South African government.
Question:
Deputy Minister what is your stance on Deputy Minister Hajaig's comments, we
spoke to the Jewish Board of Deputies yesterday and they have their own views
on that. How do you respond to that?
Answer:
Deputy Minister van Der Merwe
Deputy Minister Hajaig has unequivocally apologised for the statements that she
made, but I think we should point out that we are here today really to hold
discussions between the State of Qatar and the Republic of South Africa and
that that is what we are going to be dealing with and other matters are for the
other time.
Question:
Regarding the current global financial crisis which is beginning to shrink
the international market, do you get any feeling that any stance could result
in countries adopting protectionist kind of practices?
Answer:
Deputy Minister Sue van der Merwe
The question of the financial crisis did not really occur in our talks
today, although all countries are obviously mindful of the situation we find
ourselves in. For us as developing countries, it will have the impact of
reducing our markets. As economies in the north shrink and as economies of our
partners shrink we believe, though, that we have a strong economy in South
Africa which is going to withstand these difficulties.
We are also fortunate in South Africa to have gold, platinum and other
commodities that will bring in income for us and which will continue to be
strong commodities today. Of course it is fair to say today that this crisis in
the world will affect all of us in one way or another. The question is how we
deal with it in the context of our relationships with other countries. So this
is one of the reasons we are engaging with countries such as Qatar who have
very strong economy as well and why we believe it is important for us to keep
engaging with countries with which we do business and to, in fact, even
strengthen the base of our exports and the way we trade with other
countries.
I mentioned the Sasol plant and the South African investments and we are
also looking to the State of Qatar's ability to invest in our own countries in
various different areas of infrastructure and so on. So I don't think it would
be correct to for us to pretend that this crisis will not affect us. But
obviously we have to work out ways in which to deal with it effectively so that
we prevent and contain it to the minimum disruption of our growth plan.
Answer: Assistant Minister Al-Rumaihi
Just to say that the most important thing is how to react to the crisis.
Actually we have the effect of the crisis in the markets and we see it in all
nations. We are hoping to see these reforms at the international levels of the
monetary rules as you know that since 1945 to date we are working within one
system which is not applied 100 percent. Today we need to review if we need to
make a correction on this financial system. This is one of the issues the
Qatari government in future we will concentrate on and we will try to see the
international level by creating meetings and conferences with high placed
people and this matter and especially from the financial institutions to see
what we can do in the future to face the crisis or resolve the problem.
Question
To what extent will the financial crisis limit the Qatari investment to South
Africa?
Answer:
Assistant Minister Al-Rumaihi
Well our relationship with South Africa does not only go to investment but
to co-operation and exchange and the market and we invest together in the gas
project and that we sell to the rest of the world and it is a very demanded
product so it is not necessarily affected by the crisis. We are looking forward
to creating something like commodity between us especially at the petrochemical
and gas market. This is a very important investment we still can do a lot
between the two countries.
Issued by: Department of Foreign Affairs
4 February 2009
