Onboard Air India One, Apr 25 : On her return from two-week long visit to three Latin American countries - Mexico, Brazil and Chile, President Pratibha Patil said that her visit was successful as it would help India strengthen cooperation with these countries as, she said, “we face same more or less same problem and share a common platform of democracy.”

She said the commonalities between India and the three countries “enables us to come closer to each other and voice our concern in various international fora for our benefit.”

“With my visit to the countries, the cooperation between us is going to strengthen because our problems are same, our ideas are same. We are democracies and system of government democracies is same. We are developing countries. So, I think we could work together in solving our problems and present ourselves united in international forum,” she said while speaking to media persons onboard her special aircraft “Air India One”.

She described her visit as both “educative and productive”.

“My discussions with Presidents of all the three countries were warm, substantive and forward looking. My visit was also marked by extensive discussions between the Indian business delegation and their counterparts in these countries. This undermines our determination to provide a strong trade and economic foundation to our growing relationship with them,” she said at the end of her maiden foreign visit after assuming the country’s highest office.

She also said: “Agriculture is an area of importance for all of us especially.”

During her tour, India signed four agreements with Brazil on extradition treaty, oil and natural gas, agriculture and allied sectors and in civil defence and humanitarian assistance.

In the first phase of her tour, Patil visited Brazil where she had a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva. Both leaders lauded their commitment to enhance bilateral trade, and said that both countries would achieve 10 billion dollars bilateral trade by 2010.

During her tour to Mexico, Patil met her Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon Hinojose. Both reiterated their assurance that the two countries would seek to promote bilateral relations that depend on goodwill and friendship between people. Both leaders also emphasized the importance to expand contacts in different fields like culture, education, tourism and film and television.

India and Mexico signed two agreements, one for cooperation in civil aviation and the other for cooperation in the energy sector.

During her trip to Chile, the two governments inked four cooperation agreements on science and technology, air services, sports and Antarctica expeditions.

President Patil and her Chilean counterpart Michelle Bachelet showed their commitment to strengthen their partnership to build a better world and an equitable global order. Both leaders claimed that their dialogue on bilateral, regional and international issues has been most fruitful. (ANI)