Dakar, July 25: The African tour of His Highness the Prime Minister of Kuwait Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah has helped strengthen ties between the Gulf state and the visited countries in the field of aviation, said an official on Saturday.
Director of Kuwait’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Fawaz Al-Farah, who is accompanying the delegation, said that official talks were held with aviation authorities in the visited countries, out of keenness for boosting relations and based on the open skies policy implemented by Kuwait.
His Highness Sheikh Nasser’s tour took him to Benin, Gabon, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Comoros, and Swaziland. Senegal is the final stop.
In Benin, Al-Farah said that talks resulted in signing a cooperation agreement in the aviation sector, based on the principle of open skies, adding that in the future, flight routes would be operated between Kuwait and agriculture-rich Benin, especially cargo planes.
As for the second stop of the tour, Gabon, Al-Farah said that the Kuwaiti side presented a new draft aviation agreement that the Gabonese side promised to study, noting that a meeting between the two sides would be arranged in the future to discuss measures that needed to be taken to sign the agreement.
“In Djibouti, our third stop, a new aviation services agreement was signed during talks with the civil aviation authorities, the first such agreement with Djibouti, based on the open skies principle,” he said.
On talks in Ethiopia, the Kuwaiti official said that the bilateral agreement signed in 1997 was renewed through a memorandum of understanding, whereby more flights would be operated and direct flights between Kuwait and Addis Ababa.
Talks with officials in the Comoros focused on cooperation between the two countries in the civil aviation field, he said.
In Swaziland, Al-Farah said that the Kuwaiti side signed a new bilateral agreement for regulating aviation services, as well as a memorandum of understanding based on open skies, thereby allowing a frame through which to operate flights between the two countries.
–Agencies-