Pelosi Remarks Before Meeting with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet

Pelosi Remarks Before Meeting with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi held brief press availability this morning with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet before their meeting in the Capitol. Below are their remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Good morning. It is a great honor indeed to welcome back to the Capitol the great President of Chile. It is a special, personal privilege for me because being a Californian - California has a special relationship with Chile. And I know that on your recent visit there, that relationship was intensified and Californians are very happy about that.

Madam President, you visit comes at a time where we are debating an energy bill on the floor in the Congress this week - hopefully. In your conversations with the President, you have talked about a collaborative effort, a cooperative effort, between the United States and Chile. It is a very important issue for security, for the economy, for the health of our people, and for the preservation of our planet.

We have a special relationship with Chile, as you know - culturally, economically and in this hemisphere we are neighbors. All Americans rejoiced when the President was elected, the first woman President of Chile. We watch with great admiration, her leadership there. Some of our Members were present at her inauguration. And we know that she has managed the economic crisis in Chile very well and I look forward to hearing from her, some advice on that scale.

I thank you Madam President for joining us today. I am delighted to welcome you back to the Capitol.

President Bachelet. Well thank you, Madam Speaker of the House, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi. I am very happy to be here, once again, and also with the first woman Speaker of the House here in the United States - to enhance our wonderful relationship, to continue finding other ways of building common projects together in the bilateral arena, in the multilateral arena, regarding Latin America.

As she said, we have a special bond with California. From the '60s, we have a special program with Chile and California and we went there last year we opened - I would say - this new program, but now as partners, because Chile is a country who's developing but has a lot of possibilities, opportunities and strengths. And our visit - our official visit to the U.S. when we did yesterday's visit to President Obama - today the visit to the Speaker of the House. It's a wonderful opportunity to continue sharing experiences, continue working in areas like energy. We're going to work in solar energy between Chile and the United States, we're going to work in cancer research, and we're going to work in a lot of biotechnology innovation, education.

So, we believe that our traditional friendship will be every day more strong - more strength, every day improved and it will mean better possibilities for our peoples and the peoples of Latin America. Thank you very much.