ForMin Aurescu starts a visit to US for talks with SecState Blinken

Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu will have consultations today in Washington DC with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, as part of a visit to the US November 8-9, at the invitation of his American counterpart.According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE), the visit also marks the official opening of the seventh meeting of the Romania-US Strategic Dialogue for the implementation of the Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century between Romania and the United States of 2011."Organised amid the anniversary events of 2021 in the bilateral relationship - ten years since the adoption of the Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century and the signing and entry into force of the Agreement Between the United States of America and Romania on the Deployment of the United States Ballistic Missile Defense System in Romania, as well as five years since the commissioning of the anti-missile facility in Deveselu - the visit will provide important opportunities to reconfirm the strong bilateral commitment to the strategic partnership and to strengthen co-operation in promoting projects of common interest on all dimensions of the strategic partnership. The visit will precede the 25th anniversary in 2022 of the release of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the USA," according to MAE.Given the context, talks between Aurescu and Blinken will aim to identify concrete ways to develop and deepen bilateral political, security, defence, and energy co-operation, strengthening economic co-operation, including promoting strategic interconnection projects that are a priority with Romania - Rail2Sea and Via Carpathia, as well as civil nuclear co-operation."Minister Bogdan Aurescu will also reiterate Romania's interest, as a strategic partner of the USA, in making actual progress with Romania's accession to the Visa Waiver programme, as an objective of great importance to Romanian citizens. Also addressed will be recent security developments, with a focus on the Black Sea region and security on NATO's Eastern Flank, co-ordination within NATO, including on the negotiation of the New Strategic Concept, as well as other items of interest on the transatlantic agenda. There will also be an exchange of views on the state of play in the relations with Russia, China, as well as on the regional agenda, including recent developments in the Republic of Moldova," MAE informed.