President to host Portuguese PM

President Mahinda Rajapaksa will receive visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho at Temple trees today where he will be hosted to lunch, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.

The Prime Minister will be in Sri Lanka for a brief stay on his way to Timor Leste (formerly East Timor), a former Portuguese colony.

He is scheduled to visit the Colombo Museum, the Colombo Harbour to see the Portuguese Stone monument and later the Galle Fort where he will have dinner prior to his departure for Colombo to board his flight, the next morning.

The spokesperson said Tanzania’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Bernard K. Membe will also arrive in the country, on the same flight as the Portuguese Prime Minister.

The Tanzanian Minister will arrive on a two-day working visit where two important bi-lateral agreements - on the setting up of a Joint Commission on Cooperation and Bilateral Political Consultations – will be signed with his counterpart External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris.

The two dignitaries will be received at the Airport this morning by Prof. Peiris.

MF