ARGENTINA: Mercosur countries sign trade agreements with Cuba at summit meeting in Cordoba

Record ID: 449064

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Mercosur countries sign trade agreements with Cuba at summit meeting in Cordoba
  • Date: 22nd July 2006
  • Summary: (EU) CORDOBA, ARGENTINA (JULY 21, 2006) (REUTERS) SECURITY OUTSIDE HOTEL WHERE SOME PRESIDENTS ARE STAYING MOTORCADE OF BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT EVO MORALES ARRIVING AT HOTEL FOR BILATERAL MEETING MORALES WALKING THROUGH LOBBY EXTERIOR OF HOTEL VARIOUS OF CHILEAN PRESIDENT MICHELLE BACHELET LEAVING HER HOTEL AND GETTING INTO VEHICLE VARIOUS OF PROTEST AGAINST URUGUAY PLANS TO BUILD PAPER FACTORY ON RIVER BORDERING ARGENTINA VARIOUS OF SECURITY WATCHING PROTEST (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) COORDINATOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSEMBLY, OSVALDO MOUSSOU, SAYING: "We don't believe him, if (Uruguayan President Tabare) Vazquez could not shut it for 90 days as he said in Chile because the factory did not want to, then he won't be able to once they are built."
  • Embargoed: 6th August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: International Relations,Economic News
  • Reuters ID: LVA3Z3UBRNZ9SVTKPEB782EI3TEU
  • Story Text: Washington's most outspoken critics in Latin America held centre stage at a Mercosur summit on Friday (July 21), giving a sharp leftward push to the meeting of South America's largest trade bloc.
    Cuban President Fidel Castro made a rare international appearance to celebrate the recent incorporation of Cuba's close ally Venezuela into Mercosur, a union of South American countries to promote free trade.
    The communist leader signed an expanded trade accord between Mercosur and Cuba, which has been under a U.S. economic embargo for more than four decades.
    Venezuela this month joined Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay as full members of Mercosur; Bolivia and Chile are associate members.
    The three outspoken leftist leaders -- Castro, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales -- were to lead a rally of university students and political activists on Friday after the summit.
    Security looked on earlier on Friday as a small group of Argentine protesters gathered outside the meeting to protest the construction of two paper mills in Uruguay along a river shared by the two countries.
    Castro's visit, which generated a highlighted the difference in vision among South American leaders over Mercosur and its efforts to more closely link the region's economies.
    During his opening remarks, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner called for Mercosur to be more than an economic trade block.
    "We have to make great efforts to achieve integration. We are going to have to overcome many difficulties, we are going to defeat many interests, and we are going to have to understand and make others understand that it is not only economic integration. We are not interested in a region where there is only economic integration and yet is full of poverty, of exclusion, of unemployment, of lack of investment, of lack of industrial development," he said to applause by Castro and Chavez.
    Chavez has called the group a counterbalance to U.S. free-trade deals.
    Securing energy supplies is a top priority at the meeting in Cordoba, some 435 miles (700 km) northwest of Buenos Aires.
    Bolivia is negotiating higher prices for its natural gas exports to Brazil, and Argentina is discussing a tax increase that will make its gas sales more costly for Chile.
    After a meeting between Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's planning minister told reporters details of the increase would be defined by Monday (July 24).
    Some analysts believe an alliance between the bloc's four founders and Venezuela will be greatly beneficial, since the world's No.5 oil exporter has already offered cheap fuel to some neighbours and is spearheading a proposal to build a massive gas pipeline running the length of South America.
    But tensions among Mercosur members have been high of late. Smaller countries Uruguay and Paraguay say they want to pursue free-trade deals outside the bloc and accuse Argentina and Brazil of protectionism.
    The leaders also made a call for peace in the Middle East.
    "We want to make a humble yet strong plea in solidarity to ask for a quick path to peace and an end to the deaths of hundreds of brothers, the majority civilians, in this conflict in the Middle East. That there be an end to the mutual aggressions, to the invasions. That they may think that peace in the world, respect for life, and dignity are fundamental," said Kirchner.
    The meeting in Cordoba was of particular personal importance to Castro.
    The central Argentine city is near the childhood home of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary who helped lead the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power in Cuba.
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