SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's a great pleasure for me to welcome Minister Zameer, my colleague from the Maldives, here to the State Department, to Washington, I think your first visit in this job. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
For us, the Maldives is an important partner, and we want to make sure that we're a good partner to the Maldives. We stand together in working to make sure that we have a free and open Indo-Pacific region. We stand together in dealing with the challenge posed by climate change - a challenge to lives and livelihoods that we both take very seriously, and where the Maldives is a leader and we, I hope, are a good, effective partner. We're working together to make sure that we have a secure maritime space, and fundamentally work together to try to build a prosperous future for our people.
Very much appreciate you being here today, so that we can not only continue this work but deepen it and continue to strengthen the partnership between the Maldives and the United States. So welcome.
FOREIGN MINISTER ZAMEER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. It's a pleasure to be here in this beautiful city today, and I bring greetings from the Maldives, the president and the people of Maldives. And I really look forward to have a very fruitful relationship with U.S., and, also, I think we have had in the past governments as well. So, we will continue to be working together. I think our teams are well in touch in the past couple of months, and since we took office, and we really appreciate the fact that when - since we came into the government we have had very high-level exchanges between our two countries. And I'm confident that the challenges that we have in the future, we will be meeting together, and we will be able to overcome them.
Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone.
