Mr. The Commissioner in Charge of Social Protection
Mr. The Representante of World Food Program
Mr. The Wali
Mr. The Governor
Mr. The Mayor
Ladies and Gentlemen

Let me use the occasion of launching the activities of the Extended Intervention Program for Aid and Evaluation for this year, to express the support that the United States government granted to Mauritanian people in the domain of fight against poverty.

Our government follows with attention the situation of food and nutritional security in Mauritania. Therefore, our specialized agency USAID, has already contributed with more than 4 billions ouguiyas to this program since its first launching, this amount represents round half of all the gathered contributions of all the nations granted to this program until today.

From other side the USAID has granted an amount of more than 5 billions ouguiyas for a program of food security and nutrition which will be executed by “Counterpart International”, which is a new American NGO that will be installed here in Mauritania in the coming days.

I wish the two previous mentioned programs success in contributing to the settlement of the problems of food security in the country.

Before I finish, let me use this occasion to congratulate his Excellency Mr. the commissioner in charge of social protection for his new job, and I thank the representative of World Food Program for commendable work done in collaboration with Mauritanian Government.

Chargé d’Affaires Steven Koutsis
Embassy of the United States of America in Mauritania
Aleg,  May 23, 2007.