MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mujica and Cristina meet next June 2nd; Uruguay to complain trade restrictions

The last time it was all smiles, now it’s real business

Uruguayan president Jose Mujica will meet with Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner next June 2nd at the Uruguayan presidential farm in Anchorena, a 15 minutes helicopter ride from Buenos Aires, announced Wednesday Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro.

The meeting had originally been scheduled for June 4th and is the first concrete step to the formal “re-launching of bilateral relations” which have been under stress because of the ongoing dispute over the construction of pulp mills on the shared river Uruguay.

Eight ministers from both sides are to participate in the meeting that will address a long list of bilateral issues such as a second analysis of the International Court of Justice ruling on the Botnia controversy; Argentine trade restrictions; Argentine limits on ship transfers of Argentine cargo in Uruguayan ports and dredging access channels to the River Plate shared by the neighbouring countries.

According to Almagro's statements on his return to Montevideo from the EU-Latin America and Caribbean leaders’ summit in Madrid, several “side-talks” were carried out in order to fix and confirm the date for the meeting. “We are building a new tie based on a renewed concept of neighbouring countries”, underlined Almagro.

Almagro pointed out some days ago that the joint environmental monitoring of the Uruguay River, as ordered by the World Court in The Hague, will be one 18 priority items to consider at the summit, including “commercial aspects, infrastructure and dredging”.

Uruguayan government and private sector officials linked to port activities are particularly concerned about the latest measures from the Cristina Kirchner administration forbidding ships carrying Argentine freight to Brazil from docking at Montevideo.

The offending resolution in a recent flurry of trade restrictions stipulates the denial of Argentine export permits to Brazil for all vessels passing through Montevideo according to port officials.