Pelosi Remarks Before Meeting With Chilean President Michelle Bachelet

WASHINGTON, June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a
brief press availability this morning with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet
before their meeting in the Capitol. Below are their remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Good morning. It is a great honor indeed to welcome back to
the Capitol the great President of Chile. It is a special, personal privilege
for me because being a Californian -- California has a special relationship
with Chile. And I know that on your recent visit there, that relationship was
intensified and Californians are very happy about that.

Madam President, your visit comes at a time where we are debating an energy
bill on the floor in the Congress this week -- hopefully. In your
conversations with the President, you have talked about a collaborative
effort, a cooperative effort, between the United States and Chile. It is a
very important issue for security, for the economy, for the health of our
people, and for the preservation of our planet.

We have a special relationship with Chile, as you know -- culturally,
economically and in this hemisphere we are neighbors. All Americans rejoiced
when the President was elected, the first woman President of Chile. We watch
with great admiration, her leadership there. Some of our Members were present
at her inauguration. And we know that she has managed the economic crisis in
Chile very well and I look forward to hearing from her, some advice on that
scale.

I thank you Madam President for joining us today. I am delighted to welcome
you back to the Capitol.

President Bachelet. Well thank you, Madam Speaker of the House, the Honorable
Nancy Pelosi. I am very happy to be here, once again, and also with the first
woman Speaker of the House here in the United States -- to enhance our
wonderful relationship, to continue finding other ways of building common
projects together in the bilateral arena, in the multilateral arena, regarding
Latin America.

As she said, we have a special bond with California. From the '60s, we have a
special program with Chile and California and we went there last year we
opened -- I would say -- this new program, but now as partners, because Chile
is a country who's developing but has a lot of possibilities, opportunities
and strengths. And our visit -- our official visit to the U.S. when we did
yesterday's visit to President Obama -- today the visit to the Speaker of the
House. It's a wonderful opportunity to continue sharing experiences, continue
working in areas like energy. We're going to work in solar energy between
Chile and the United States, we're going to work in cancer research, and we're
going to work in a lot of biotechnology innovation, education.

So, we believe that our traditional friendship will be every day more strong
-- more strength, every day improved and it will mean better possibilities for
our peoples and the peoples of Latin America. Thank you very much.

Visit Speaker.gov

SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House

Brendan Daly, Nadeam Elshami or Drew Hammill, all of the Office of the Speaker
of the House, +1-202-226-7616