A senior Foreign Office minister summed up Britain’s position on Gibraltar firmly and concisely this week in Parliament. “At the heart of this issue is the right of the people of Gibraltar to determine their own future,” said Baroness Warsi, Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Protesters battled soldiers on Wednesday in the streets of Caracas again as three more fatal shootings raised to 25 the death toll from a month of demonstrations against Venezuela's populist government.
Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet will travel to Argentina in April for what will be her first official visit since being re-elected for office, the nation's Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz confirmed on Wednesday. Muñoz was accompanied by Argentine Héctor Timerman as he made the announcement.
Bilateral trade, Mercosur/EU talks, oil and gas cooperation, and Falkland Islands, plus some audacious comments on the coming World Cup match Uruguay/England, were some of the issues addressed by Foreign Office minister for Latin-American Hugo Swire during his one day visit to Uruguay on Wednesday.
Socialist Michelle Bachelet promised to tackle inequality as she took the oath of office on Tuesday, returning to power after four years to lead Chile. Bachelet succeeds conservative Sebastian Piñera, who said he was leaving his successor “a better country than the one we had four years ago.”
Ecuador' Xavier Lasso Mendoza was elected by 'acclamation' as Chair of the 2014 session of the Special Committee on Decolonization together with Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez (Cuba), Vandi Chidi Minah (Sierra Leone) and Desra Percaya (Indonesia), as Vice-Chairs, and Bashar Ja’afari (Syria), as Rapporteur, according to the UN release.
For the first time in many years, the UN decolonization unit held several meetings with each of the four administering powers: United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and the United States, as well as various other “stakeholders”, in order to identify next steps in the decolonization process.
Motor vehicle production in Brazil surged in February after auto workers returned from vacations, but production remains below levels seen in 2013 and sales have also dropped in the first two months of the year.
Foreign ministers from Unasur (Union of South American Nations) will be drafting a statement calling for peace and dialogue to end the month-long clashes in Venezuela when they be meeting on Wednesday in Santiago de Chile. The meeting and agenda have the support from the Venezuelan government.
Hugo Swire MP, Minister of State for Latin America in the British Foreign Office is in Chile representing the UK at the inauguration of President Michelle Bachelet. In addition to attending official activities as part of the presidential inauguration, Minister Swire’s program will be focused on strengthening UK-Chile ties in areas such as trade and investment, science and innovation and education.