Ecuador opens innovation office in Jerusalem – Israel News – The Jerusalem Post
In a move to strengthen ties with the Jewish state, Ecuador opened an innovation office in Jerusalem on Thursday during a visit to Israel by the Latin American country’s President Guillermo Lasso and Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Holguín.
“A turning point for the country’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem!,” Holguín tweeted Thursday after a symbolic ribbon ceremony at Hebrew University in Jerusalem to mark the event.
Ecuador’s new technology and innovation office itself will be housed in the trade office Columbia opened in Jerusalem last year.
Israel and Ecuador have had formal diplomatic ties since 1949, but Lasso’s arrival here on Monday marks the first time that the country’s president has visited Israel.
“We are opening a new page in our relationship with Ecuador,” Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General Jonathan Peled told The Jerusalem Post.
Peled who heads the ministry’s Latin American desk said that Lasso, who was elected into office last year, has sought to improve ties with Israel as part of his desire to strengthen his relationship with the United States and the West.
“For 15 years Ecuador was aligned with the Bolivar movement in Latin America, which identified itself with Venezuela, with Bolivia, with Cuba. Now for the first time in a decade and a half, they have shifted their foreign policy,” he said.
Lasso, center-right politician and a former banker, “is shifting toward the West, the United States and toward Israel,” Peled explained.
“Ecuador is a small but important country” that neighbors other Israeli Latin Americana allies, Columbia and Peru, in the western part of southern America, Peled said.
Now “that they have decided to shift from an anti-Israeli policy to a more forthcoming policy we are of course very interested on the political level and we see a great opportunity on the commercial and economic level,” he added.
“Opening an innovation office is another way to increase cooperation,” Peled said.
During Lasso’s visit, which ends Friday, the two countries signed cooperation agreements in science and trade, Peled said. Ecuador is particularly interested in Israeli technology with regard to the homeland and cyber security, he added.
Ecuador in turn is one of the leading countries in the export of bananas, pineapples, cocoa and coffee, he added.
The high-level visit took place alongside one by a 100-member business delegation.