The first ambassador of Mozambique to the United States of America (USA), Valeriano Ferrão, lost his life this Sunday in Maputo, victim of illness, advanced Radio Mozambique citing a family source.

The former ambassador and fighter for the national liberation struggle "was hospitalized in a clinic in Maputo city" due to an illness.

Almost foreseeing this drama, in the book "Ambassador to the USA", published by Ndjira in August 2007, he himself wrote: "I will soon turn 68. I shouldn't last much longer, maybe another five, ten at most. I will die, it is the fate of any living being. It is enough to have been born, it is obligatory to die."

In 1963 he went into exile in Paris. There he worked and was integrated in groups composed of Portuguese fleeing military service and FRELIMO members, in contact with other colleagues in Algiers and Dar es Salaam.

In 1964 he went to Switzerland to study engineering, in Neuchâtel. In 1970 he went to Algiers, Cairo and Dar es Salaam, serving there, in a FRELIMO camp, military training and assuming the position of teacher. In 1983 he was appointed Ambassador of Mozambique in Washington.

Valeriano Ferrão became ambassador in the 1980s, when Mozambique's first independent president, Samora Moisés Machel, opened the country to the accident. At that time the American president was Ronald Reagan.

The foreign political community considered Valeriano one of the most competent African envoys in the performance of his duties.