President of Seychelles Danny Faure said he regards St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a great partner in its efforts to bring to the forefront of all global dialogues the challenges faced by Small Island Nations.
President Faure was speaking at a Cocktail reception hosted for Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who was on a two-day state visit to Seychelles.
During the reception, President Faure formally welcomed and thanked the Prime Minister for accepting to be the Guest of Honour during the National Day Celebrations on Saturday.
He said “Our island nations although oceans apart are linked by the powerful bonds of our shared history, our common language, and our strong cultural links. Your presence here today, Excellency, is a true testimony of the warm friendship between our nations,”.
The head of state of Seychelles, reiterated the commitment of Seychelles towards deepening the bonds of friendship and bilateral relations with St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The relations will focus on elevating cooperation to the highest level, through exchanges of expertise, people-to-people connections, continuous dialogue and more importantly and working on common platforms to foster global solidarity on matters of critical importance.
On his side, Prime Minister Gonsalves said, “I would like to reaffirm the commonalities that exist between our two countries and people. Islands are peculiar entities under one nation-state umbrella.”
He said that “in that context internally we have our map laid out in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations which we adopted in September 2015. You can twist them in or out.”
“Almost everything that we do you can adopt that as an appropriate framework. One of those goals entices us to have a partnership with other countries.
Like Seychelles, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a small island state. Located in the Caribbean, it has a population of about 110,000 people, just more than Seychelles’ approximately 95,000 people.
