US senator visits troops here, calls on Lobregat
Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, USA arrived in the city early morning Tuesday to visit the American troops participating in the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines (JSOTFP) based at the Western Mindanao Command in Upper Calarian, this city.
In the afternoon, Sen. Nelson together with wife, Grace, JSOTFP commander Col. Bill Coultrup and Deputy Director Elzadia Washington of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid a courtesy call on Mayor Celso Lobregat in City Hall.
Earlier, the senator’s wife visited the birthing clinic, a project of the USAID, at the Zamboanga City Medical Center.
During the visit at City Hall, the American senator and Mayor Lobregat exchanged ideas on numerous issues such as Zamboanga’s Asia’s Latin City branding, the infrastructure projects, health and social services programs and the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) which was declared unconstitutional and not within the bounds of law by the Supreme Court.
The two officials also presented each other with tokens and mementos as a show of friendship and gratitude.
Senator Nelson, a politician for 30 years, is a moderate Democrat and member of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, having been first elected to the US Senate in 2000 and was reelected in 2006. He served in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991. He will be up for reelection on November 8, 2012.
Nelson is an avid supporter of the US space program. In 1986, he became the second member of Congress to travel into space when he served aboard the Columbia space shuttle for 7 days as payload specialist.
He chairs the Senate Armed Forces Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Committee on Commerce Subcommittee on Technology and Space, member of the Armed Forces Committee, Budget Committee, Finance Committee, Select Committee on Intelligence and Special Committee on Aging. (Vic Larato)