SAMOA will be the third Pacific country to open an embassy in Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Laaulialemalietoa Polataivao Schmidt instructed the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to begin work on the opening of an office in the Israeli capital after Fiji and Papua New Guinea opened their missions.
Schmidt said he wanted the embassy up and running this year.
This week, he told a gathering of the Sāmoa branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem of his plans.
Only a handful of countries recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the United Nations General Assembly voted in 2017 to ask nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city.
Schmidt said he met Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel while receiving medical treatment in New Zealand last year.
“I am very grateful when the [deputy] Minister of Foreign Affairs came all the way from Jerusalem to visit me when I was sick in New Zealand,” he said.
“It was a blessing for me to know that Israel has also had an eye [on] Sāmoa, because we had a lot of connection in many ways.”
Rewritten from an article by Radio New Zealand International