The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, was forced yesterday to interrupt the tour she had just begun to the Persian Gulf, after a member of her delegation tested positive for coronavirus on arrival in Kuwait, the first stop on her trip.
In a message on its Twitter account, the ministry announced the cancellation of the tour, noting that the person concerned had travelled with two negative PCRs in the 72 hours prior to the trip.
It appears that on Saturday night, after the delegation arrived at Kuwait City airport, it was retested and one of its members tested positive. As a result, on Sunday, the delegation was confined to their hotel, awaiting the result of another PCR test, which was positive again, although the person concerned did not show any symptoms of COVID-19.
In view of this situation, according to the Ministry on Twitter, “out of prudence” and despite the fact that “the tests on the rest of the bubble were negative”, the decision was taken to cancel all the face-to-face meetings that the minister had planned to hold in Kuwait, and part of the agenda was kept online. Finally, it was decided to suspend the trip.
However, according to information from the newspaper El País, the minister had to suspend her meetings with the emir of Kuwait and the crown prince, but she did hold meetings with the prime minister, Sheikh Sabah Al Khaled Al Sabah, and with his counterpart, Ahmed Al Nasser Al Sabha, who promised to visit Spain in the near future.
He also spoke by telephone with the managing director of the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the fourth largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with a portfolio of more than 500 billion dollars (420 billion euros) of capital, Faruq Bastaki, with whom he agreed to prepare a technical presentation of the Spanish reconstruction programme, with 140 billion in European funding.
The Spanish delegation was scheduled to leave Kuwait City last night, without carrying out the second part of the tour that was to take González Laya to Iraq, where the minister wanted to express the Spanish government’s support for Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi, given the complicated context in which the country finds itself, faced with socio-economic problems, falling oil prices and a pandemic that has only worsened the situation.
In addition, the head of Spanish diplomacy was scheduled to meet with the heads of the Spanish military contingent that is participating with 144 troops in the International Coalition mission against Daesh and with another 49 in NATO’s NMI operation.
