Mbeki hails SA, Malaysia pact
4 September 2003
President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday hailed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between South Africa and Malaysia as an important step towards closer cooperation.
Mbeki, who led a 70-member strong delegation on a three-day visit to Malaysia, was speaking at a function in his honour in Kuala Lumpur after the two countries agreed to increase cooperation in the economic, scientific, technical and cultural fields.
"The agreement and the memorandum of understanding that we signed today lay a strong foundation to achieve these objectives. We will ensure that all outstanding agreements, including the protection and promotion of investments and double taxation, are finalised as soon as possible," Mbeki said.
"Both the scale and nature of the cooperation we have achieved has given concrete expression to the objective to which both our countries are committed -South-South cooperation.
"Malaysia and South Africa share many objectives.
One of these is the development of our countries as stable, peaceful and prosperous non-racial democracies," he said.
Mbeki said a further challenge was to develop the countries of the South to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.
"This includes restructuring the relations between North and South and the strengthening of the United Nations as a democratic institution that represents and responds to the interests of all countries, both large and small," said Mbeki.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mbeki held discussions with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, where they discussed peace efforts in the Middle East, Palestine, Israel and Iraq, Afro-Asian solidarity, as well as ways to strengthen relations between Asian and African multilateral bodies.
Source:BuaNews
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