Joan Collins
THE Majorcan Jaume Segura is one of the five diplomats chosen by the Spanish Government to combat illegal immigration, within the project Plan for Africa, approved last Friday by the Cabinet.
Segura, until now secretary to the Spanish Embassy in Jamaica, is being sent to Guinea Conakry, one of the main countries where the illegal immigrants come from.
Other countries where high numbers of illegal immigrants come from are Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, the Green Cape, and Niger.
To these must also be added Senegal, which is the country chosen as the centre of operations in the continent.
Segura's mission in Guinea Conakry will be to talk to the local authorities in order to try to combat the flow of illegal immigrants, in not less than three or six months.
The Spanish Government has confidence in Jaume Segura, a career diplomat and the youngest (27) of the students to pass the oposiciones exams, because of his great work in Jamaica.
In this country, which has a very high tourism rate, he was a very successful negotiator for numerous Majorcan companies in this sector.
He looks on his new mission as another challenge in his short but successful professional career.
Jaume Segura gained experience in the debates in the Formentor Forum, where various personalities from the Middle East and Magreb were present. Before that he had his first appointment, forming part of the Cabinet of the ex Ministers Josep Pique and Ana Palacios, in Jose Maria Aznar's government.
The Majorcan diplomat will have a very delicate mission in Guinea Conakry, which the Spanish Ambassador, Miguel Angel Mazarambroz, designed in a special mission.
The objective of the starting of the Plan for Africa is to stop illegal immigration.
Mazarambroz has coordinated from Dakar a diplomatic cell for the application of the Plan for Africa in six countries: Senegal, Gambia, the Green Cape, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Niger.
The main objective of this initiative is to send diplomats to the region to stop illegal immigrants leaving the country and the formalising of agreements for the repatriation of illegal immigrants with the countries in the area.
VIGILANCE
This will be accompanied by the reinforcement of vigilance on the Spanish and Moroccan coasts as well as the surrounding areas of the Spanish towns of Ceuta and Melilla in the north of Morocco.
The objective is to stop the organised gangs who trade in the transport of illegal immigrants, who have moved to more southern countries where they have set up departure points for the Canary Islands.
Against this background, the work of Jaume Segura will be to contact the representatives of the Guinea Conakry Government and convince them to take measures which will reduce the flow of illegal immigrants.
Government to combat illegal immigration