The President of the Government defended today that the process for the revision of the Cooperation and Defence Agreement between Portugal and the United States should be carried out, seeing that the report presented by the US Department of Defence does not provide any response to the reduction of US forces stationed at Lajes Air Base.
 
"The report presented by the Department of Defence to the Congress, which reflects the assessment on the possibilities of installing new services at Lajes Base, does not correspond to what we expected and is indeed bad news," said Vasco Cordeiro .
 
Speaking to journalists in Ponta Delgada, the President of the Government stressed that, in face of the conclusions of the report commissioned by the US Congress under the Defence Budget for 2016, "we exhausted the last possibility to reach a satisfactory solution for this issue within the current framework of the on Cooperation and Defence Agreement between Portugal and the United States."
 
"Now, there is no other choice but to move forward with revision of the Cooperation and Defence Agreement and, subsequently, the Technical and Labour agreements," Vasco Cordeiro said, emphasising that the assumptions underpinning the signing of the Agreement are completely different with regard to the US presence at Lajes Air Base.
 
For Vasco Cordeiro, the way this process was conducted does not honour the spirit of the Cooperation and Defence Agreement signed between both countries and, therefore, "bearing in mind what I said before, I say it is now time to move forward with the revision process of the agreement.”
 
"Naturally, Portugal will continue to share with the United States common values and interests and we can even remain as friends and allies, but, perhaps, this relation was stronger.  This has to be reflected also on concrete matters," said Vasco Cordeiro.