Smart Partnership summit ends

Jul 29, 2009

THE 2009 Smart Partnership dialogue at the Commonwealth Resort, Munyonyo in Kampala, ended on Tuesday with the leaders reaffirming their commitment to work together to stimulate development.

By Milton Olupot

THE 2009 Smart Partnership dialogue at the Commonwealth Resort, Munyonyo in Kampala, ended on Tuesday with the leaders reaffirming their commitment to work together to stimulate development.

They also agreed to integrate the summit recommendations to their respective government programmes.

Briefing the media at the closing ceremony, President Yoweri Museveni said the participants learnt a lot by sharing ideas.

Museveni praised Malaysia, which was represented by the deputy prime minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, saying their experience was useful during the dialogue as a success story.

“Their success story has encouraged many of us. In 1969, Malaysia was in the news for racial riots, but from that time on, they evolved through the ideology of Smart partnership,” he said.

Museveni said the partnership was a useful guide offering win-win situations to all partners to promote development and facilitate inter-regional trade and investment.

The President dispelled the argument that the conference was too big to exhaustively discuss the issues, saying there was a secretariat that picked the points raised.

He noted that the secretariat would forward the main issues to participating countries for implementation.

Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, Rupiah Banda of Zambia and King Mswati III of Swaziland were among the 1,000 delegates who attended.

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