Israeli water irrigation experts have been invited to Chile to help this country study ways and means of irrigating arid land and improving present irrigation methods, it was reported by Israeli Ambassador Moshe Tov. The Israeli envoy told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that several months ago President Salvador Allende sent the Chilean Minister of Development to Israel to meet with Israeli water irrigation experts. After several days of intense work, the minister and the president of the Institute of Arid Zones in the Negev came to an agreement, along with the Latin American Institute for Economic and Social Planning, to conduct a one-year study program.
Tov said that the program, expected to begin in May, will be conducted for five months in Israel and seven months in Chile. The program will not be a theoretical one but a practical on the spot application of Israeli water irrigation methods to arid areas in northern Chile. “This program, one of several in this area, is a concrete example of the admiration Chile and President Allende have for Israeli technical know-how and at the same time a manifestation of Israel’s readiness to help try solve some of the problems of a nation it considers to be its. friend,” Tov said.
Meanwhile, Tov added, Shaul Alozoroff, one of Israel’s leading experts on water problems, was invited by the University of Chile to present a series of lectures on this problem. He arrived here several days ago to present a three-day lecture series. The invitation to Alozoroff was part of an exchange program between Chile and Israel of technicians, professors and students. The program was arranged, Tov said, last Oct. when the president of the University of Chile went to Israel with a group of professors and signed an exchange program agreement.
Presently, the Israeli envoy said, there are some 200 persons from Israel in Chile who received fellowships in Israel to come here and work in other countries to provide technical aid in agricultural problems. Last Wednesday another Israeli water irrigation expert was invited by Chile’s University of the North to work for six weeks to prepare the basis for a special seminar to study water irrigation problems throughout Chile.
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