The head of Indian diplomacy, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, is expected to meet with his counterparts from the Member States of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) in New York, on the sidelines of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, he said. Zacarias da Costa, in statements to Lusa.
According to the executive secretary, this meeting was requested by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of India to the CPLP.
"The meeting aims to deepen, not only cooperation in the most diverse areas - India is a very advanced country - but also to look a little at how the integration of the Indian diaspora in our countries is being done, and how is that we can work much more" in this sense, said the Timorese diplomat, who since July 2021 has assumed the leadership of the CPLP executive secretariat.
But, he underlined, the Indians are interested in cooperation in the economic area with the CPLP member states.
Furthermore, Zacarias da Costa announced that in the first week of December, the Lusophony week is planned to be held in Goa, a joint initiative of the CPLP, Camões - Institute for Cooperation and Language, the office of the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities and of the Indian authorities.
This initiative has the presence of the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities, Paulo Cafôfo, in Goa, he said.
"These are initiatives that we can always organize, where the gastronomy itself and the promotion of the Portuguese language are located and where our countries are present", stressed the Timorese diplomat, defending, however, that it is also necessary to translate books by some Indian authors to Portuguese and from Portuguese to Indian, other objectives in this strengthening of relations between CPLP and India.
"We already have many Portuguese authors that are translated into English, but we needed to have much more", defended the executive secretary.
India is one of the associated observer countries of the CPLP. India's candidacy for that status was approved at the last Summit of Heads of State and Government, which took place on 17 July 2021 in Luanda.
Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste are the nine member states of the CPLP.
