Eduardo González
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and her counterpart from Cameroon, Joseph Beti Assomo, signed yesterday a Technical Agreement of bilateral cooperation between the Spanish Navy and the Navy of the African country to reinforce security and stability in the Gulf of Guinea.
The signing took place during a videoconference meeting between Robles and Beti Assomo. According to the Ministry of Defense, the agreement signed by both ministers defines a regulatory framework for cooperation between the Cameroon Navy and the Navy in the fields of maritime protection and security, training, training and technical support, and “puts the signature for many years of work, cooperation and joint fight against organized crime, piracy and illicit trafficking in the Gulf of Guinea.”
Margarita Robles was accompanied, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Madrid, by the ambassador of the Republic of Cameroon in Spain, Paulin Godfried Reliques Yanga, the admiral chief of the Navy Staff, Antonio Piñeiro Sánchez, and the secretary general of Defense Policy, Admiral Juan Francisco Martínez Núñez.
For his part, on the other side of the screen and from Yaoundé, her Cameroonian counterpart was accompanied by the ambassador of Spain in Cameroon, Ignacio Rafael García Lumbreras, and by the chief of staff of the National Navy of Cameroon , Jean Ca Mendoua,
During the ceremony, Robles highlighted the relevance of an Agreement, which is “unequivocal testimony that the ability to share joint initiatives and projects between friendly countries is the best guarantee of security and progress” and that consolidates “a close and fruitful link between both Navies that will improve maritime security and governance in the Gulf of Guinea region and bring our two countries even closer.”
According to the Ministry of Defense, the Gulf of Guinea is considered “one of the places in the world capable of destabilizing security in general” due to the activity of “terrorist groups or criminal gangs dedicated to drug or human trafficking, without forgetting the rise of piracy in those waters.” These circumstances make the region a fundamental element for the Security and Defense of Spain and Europe.
In this context, in recent years various cooperation activities have been developed with the “allies, partners and friendly countries” of the African continent “within the framework of Defense Diplomacy and as a contribution of the Armed Forces to the external action of the State”. These initiatives have resulted in deployments of naval units that carry out maritime security and cooperative security operations with various West African countries. “The objective is to develop the capabilities of African nations in the control of their own territorial waters by carrying out joint training exercises,” the Ministry added. Spain and Cameroon have carried out several joint naval exercises.
