Mercosur

• Tuesday, July 8th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Chilean scars remain unhealed

  Thirty years after the 1973 bloody military coup that enthroned dictator Augusto Pinochet, 87% of Chileans believe the country still has not achieved national reconciliation, according to a public opinion poll published last Sunday in Santiago's main daily El Mercurio.

• Tuesday, July 8th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Appeal to the Argentine Armed Forces

  Addressing the top brass of the Armed Forces on Monday night Argentine president Nestor Kirchner told officers from the three services that “we can't take charge of the painful moments of our fatherland without contributing to the truth”, and further on emphasized that the re-encounter of Argentines “must not come from silence and complicity”.

• Tuesday, July 8th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Kirchner-Blair meeting

  Argentine president Nestor Kirchner will be leaving Thursday night for London to begin a week long meeting with European leaders in France, Spain and Brussels where he will be meeting EU Executive Committee president Romano Prodi.

• Monday, July 7th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  End of the “submission taboo”.

  Argentine Chief of cabinet said that President Nestor Kirchner ended the “submission taboo” towards the International Monetary Fund, IMF that ruled Argentina's relations with the multilateral credit organization during the nineties

• Monday, July 7th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  IMF cuts Chile's growth estimate.

  In spite of praising the achievements of the Chilean economy, an IMF staff mission visiting Chile ended its tour lowering the country's growth estimate for 2004 from 4,8 to 4,5%.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Breaking News.

  Headlines:
  Insufficient inflation in Uruguay; Deflation in Argentina; Chile's inflation flat; Unexpected rise in US unemployment.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Police Chief of Argentine Province Sacked

  Authorities sacked the police chief for Buenos Aires province on Thursday, days after plans were announced to send more than 2.000 national guardsmen onto the streets to curtail a crime wave.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Ex-generals acknowledge Pinochet-era exhumation

  Retired Chilean army generals, including members of ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's junta, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that secret graves of people who “disappeared” under the 1973-1990 dictatorship were later dug up in order to hide the bodies again.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Brazil: Good and bad news.

  Brazil managed a 10,2 billion US dollars trade surplus during the first half of 2003, in line with the government's target of annual overseas sales of 68 billion US dollars for the twelve months.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Argentine oil industry requests stable rules

  The drop in Argentina's oil and natural gas reserves, and the need for “clear and stable rules of the game” was highlighted during the “Hydrocarbons Congress 2003” that is currently taking place in Buenos Aires.