21-gun salute signals Queen’s Acapulco trip

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 8

21-gun salute signals Queen’s Acapulco trip

NZPA Acapulco A white-uniformed honour guard and a Navy band greeted Queen Elizabeth with a 21-gun salute and “God Save the Queen” as she arrived on the sun-splashed Pacific coast of Mexico yesterday to begin an eight-day cruise and official visit. Thousands of bikini-clad American tourists as well as residents lined the Miguel Aleman Avenue along the coast in the near 32C heat to catch a glimpse of the 57-year-old monarch and Prince Philip as they drove in an open-air vehicle to the Royal yacht Britannia, docked downtown.

President Miguel de la Madrid, his wife, Paloma, and the diplomatic corps

received the Royal couple when they arrived aboard a Royal Air Force jet flying a small Mexican flag and the Royal standard. The Queen reviewed the honour guard with the President at her side.

Diplomatic sources said that the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Francis Pym, had met the Mexican Foreign Minister, Mr Bernardo Sepulveda, and had discussed a wide range of issues.

Among the topics were oil prices, the political turmoil in Central America, including tense relations between Belize, a former British colony, and Guatemala, the high debt burden of Third World nations and bilateral

relations. The British Embassy said that Mr Sepulveda would travel with Mr Pym aboard the yacht until it reached Puerto Vallarta tomorrow to give the two an opportunity to continue their talks.

After the Mexican part of the tour, Britannia will take the royal couple to the United States and Canadian ports for meetings with President Ronald Reagan and other leaders.

Earlier, the Royal couple visited the Cayman Islands.

While in the islands the Queen spoke in the Legislative Chambers — a modern building more like a village hall than a Parliament, surrounded by offices of some of the more than 300 banks

and other financial institutions attracted by the Caymans banking secrecy laws and tax haven status. She thanked the 17,000 residents of the three islands west of Jamaica for a donation of £500,000 that they had raised last year for the South Atlantic Fund for widows and orphans of Britain’s Falkland Island war.

The Queen promised theislanders an upgraded airport because of the growingimportance of the Caymans as a tourist resort and financial centre, strengthening of their police force, and an unrelenting fight against the mosquito so that life on the islands would be more pleasant and healthy.