While International Trade Minister David Emerson heads east to forge trade ties in China, Mongolia and Hong Kong, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda will head south to Peru and Columbia and, we’ve just learned, Foreign Affairs Minister will fly to the Middle East to meet top leaders from Saudi Arabia, India, and Israel.
All of this happens over the next couple of weeks.
Bernier, who will travel with his parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, will be in Riyadh on January 9 to meet with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. He then flies to New Delhi for meetings on Jan. 11 and 12 with representatives of the government of India, including its foreign minister.
He then turns west again for meetings on January 13 and 14 in Ramallah and Tel Aviv. He will meet with Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, United States Security Coordinator, and Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Foreign Minister Riad Malki. In Israel, he will see Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
It is Bernier’s first trips to all of those places.