Caracas, April 7 (RHC-AVN) -- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua highlighted the potential of Latin America and the Caribbean to eradicate hunger over the coming decade, a goal set by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
 
Delegations of FAO and Petrocaribe met over the weekend at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry to discuss proposals for a plan of action to eradicate hunger and poverty in the region.
 
In this regard, Jaua explained that this was a commitment made by the member countries of Petrocaribe and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
 
"If any region has a true potential for achieving this, that region is Latin America and the Caribbean, but more specifically the Caribbean because of the size of their population and their potential to produce food," Jaua said in remarks broadcast on Telesur TV network.
 
Jaua said: "We have the resources, land, trained personnel, distribution platform, the vision of the fight against hunger, concrete results and FAO support to achieve it."
 
He said that the meeting and the relationship between Petrocaribe and FAO are based on the agreements reached at the time by the late President Hugo Chavez, who was in charge of completing a financial platform to project the true viability of a program to eradicate hunger in the Caribbean.
 
For his part, the representative of FAO, Raul Benitez, welcomed the holding of the meeting. "We are witnessing the start of a plan to end hunger in the Petrocaribe region ... achieving an agreement among Petrocaribe, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the FAO," he said.
 
Benitez added that current Latin American and Caribbean generation will be the last one to live with hunger, since within a decade projects will have positive and visible results.
 
"I congratulate at this time all countries for their hard work and the push to eradicate hunger and particularly President Nicolas Maduro for representing an example country, that was able to wipe out hunger and also shows signs of solidarity for all the region to be free of this scourge," the UN official said.