Argentina supported by Brazil has proposed increasing Mercosur Foreign External Tariff to better defend the group when country members are being flooded with cheap imports.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said he will travel on Tuesday to the Mercosur summit in Uruguay in his first official foreign trip since undergoing cancer surgery in June and a further sign he is feeling stronger.
Latin America’s projected 2011 export growth of 26% to approximately 1.1 trillion dollars continues the strong growth posted in 2010, according to new estimates by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
The president of the Paraguayan congress Senator Jorge Oviedo Matto said that Paraguay should withdraw from Mercosur if the block during its Tuesday summit in Montevideo agrees the incorporation of Venezuela “eluding the approval of the Legislative as indicates the Constitution and the Mercosur charter”.
Mercosur member countries meeting in Montevideo for their regular six-month summit are drafting a resolution that would bar Falklands’ flagged vessels from all Mercosur members’ ports, following on the traditional Argentine policy and now openly supported by the Uruguayan government.
Argentine Foreign Affairs minister Hector Timerman publicly thanked and praised on Monday the Uruguayan decision, announced last week, to bar Falklands’ flagged vessels form the port of Montevideo and any other sea or fluvial terminal in the country.
President Barack Obama has accused the government of Venezuela of threatening basic democratic values ahead of elections next year. He added that close relations with Iran and Cuba did not serve the interests of the Venezuelan people.
A two day Mercosur summit begins Monday in Montevideo with Foreign Affairs ministers meeting Monday and the presidents on Tuesday when the rotating chair will be passed from Uruguay to Argentina for the next six month.
Brazil’s International Affairs presidential advisor Marco Aurelio García admitted there is “disappointment” in Mercosur with the delay from the Paraguayan congress in approving the incorporation of Venezuela.
Uruguayan president Jose Mujica announced Mercosur is considering the modification of legislation so that Venezuela can definitively be incorporated as a full member to the South American trade block, which has been blocked for several years now by the Paraguayan Congress.