Estonia ties up with tiny Vanuatu

  • 2013-10-02
  • TBT Staff

TALLINN - Estonia has made diplomatic ties with the tiny Pacific island of Vanuatu for the first time, reports ERR. Foreign Minister Urmas Paet met with Vanuatu’s Edward Natapei at the UN general meeting in New York last week.

Issues discussed included e-government and Estonia’s ‘Let’s Do This’ civic clean-up initiative.

“Various e-solutions such as e-education, e-elections and e-medicine help intensify state and citizen relations, especially in the case of long distances, and bring services to people,” said Paet.

“We are willing to share in the course of bilateral or multilateral cooperation our experience with implementing e-solutions,” he said.

Vanuatu consists of 83 islands, with a territory spanning over 1,000 kilometers. The country has a population of 260,000 and was visited by 321,000 tourists last year. Estonian citizens can visit Vanuatu for 30 days without a visa.