Team Herald
PANJIM: Portugal President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Saturday said that India has his country’s full support to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Speaking to media persons on the sidelines of a conference on Urban Design, the President said, “You know that India has the full support of Portugal to become a permanent member of the Security Council of United Nations. We shall help India at the highest level in the next meeting of the Ocean Conference in Portugal. There is so much to do and so much has begun.”
On his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rebelo de Sousa said his long-pending meeting with Modi was very fruitful, bilaterally and multi-laterally. “We discussed concrete projects for investment – Portuguese investment in India and Indian investment in Portugal. This is for economic cooperation, scientific cooperation, technical cooperation and university and cultural cooperation for the next five years,” he said.
Earlier, addressing the conference, he said that in Goa he “feels like home”. “I have been visiting so many nations… small countries, medium size power countries, big countries but I must confess that this is very special time for me. It recalls me of my past. I find myself in India and specifically in Goa as home,” he said.
However, he also mentioned that he could not find any nostalgic vision of anything in any place in Goa. “Goa inside India is self different… such an unique place …unique where we meet the future but we do not meet the past,” the President said.
“That is why I feel my arrival in Goa is not a nostalgic one because past is past and time does not go back but past can become future if you take the advantage of that past,” Rebelo de Sousa said.
Speaking about the various MoUs signed by the Government of Goa and other State-based institutions with the Government of Portugal, Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant said that he is looking forward for the collaboration growing in strength.
