President Leonel Fern?ndez begins his European tour today, the longest trip of his Presidency. He leads a delegation of 30 – 16 high-ranking officials and 14 "special guests." Officials accompanying the President include Foreign Minister Latorre; Industry and Commerce Bonetti; Technical Secretary Tem?stocles Mont?s; Attorney-General Mariano Germ?n; Armed Forces Chief of Staff Manuel Florentino; Lom? Convention Coordinator Max Puig; Antonio Isa Conde, President of the Commission for Reform of Public Enterprises (CREP); Eddy Mart?nez, Director of the Office of Investment Promotion (OPI); and Hamlet Hermann, Director of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (AMET).The Dominican Liberation Party’s (PLD) leading strategist, Danilo Medina, Secretary of the Presidency, also had been scheduled to accompany President Fern?ndez, but declined to make the trip in order to be present during political negotiations with the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD).The delegation will depart on a 6:55 pm Iberia flight to Madrid, Spain and will not return until Wednesday, January 20th. President Fern?ndez will spend Wednesday in Madrid, where Spanish Prime Minister Jose Mar?a Aznar will host a lunch in his honor. He will then depart for Paris, where he will stay until Sunday. His French visit will include a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. He will pay courtesy calls on the heads of both chambers of the National Assembly and of the Supreme Court (known in France as the Corte de Casaci?n), and meet with delegations of French businessmen interested in investing in, or trading with, the DR. He is also expected to sign a series of agreements with France, including a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) protecting investment flows between the two countries; technical assistance agreements for improving the DR’s civil aviation regime, modernizing the Dominican judicial system, and creating a school to train Dominican diplomats; and financing agreements for the purchase of equipment for AMET and the Armed Forces. Fern?ndez then will visit Italy starting January 17th, where he will meet with President Luigi Oscar Escalfaro and Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema. He is also expected to sign a BIT with Italy, a financial cooperation accord plus other unspecified cooperation agreements. His time in Rome will include signing an agreement with the United Nation’s Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for the development of the Dominican Southeast, and a private audience with Pope John Paul II. It will be the first time a Dominican head of state has been received by a Pope at the Vatican since the dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1955.
