MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula and Duhalde in Batlle's agenda

A busy week ahead for Uruguayan president Jorge Batlle who is travelling to Brasilia to meet with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Latinamerica's largest and most influential country that has begun a strong regional political integration persuasion policy, hoping to muster sufficient support in South America to counterbalance the powerful George Bush administration.

Mr. Batlle however is a close friend of the Bush family, an advocate of open markets and closer relations with the United States, and recently sponsored in the United Nations Human Rights Commission an initiative regarding Cuba in spite of Brazilian and Argentine abstention.

So Mr. Batlle is expected to attempt some fence mending possibly with an open support for the UN Security Council as protagonist of world decisions; a clear commitment to a political Mercosur and a 4+1 trade discussion with United States, plus some bilateral trade and credit issues where Brazil acts differently to what it has been preaching since Mr. Lula took office last January.

At mid week Mr. Batlle will be hosting Argentine caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde, who in two weeks time (May 25) will be leaving office and handing the presidential sash most probably to his hand picked successor and winner of the coming May 18 run off, Mr. Nestor Kirchner. A double victory for Mr. Duhalde who is not only ensuring the continuity of his interim presidency but also the greatest defeat and political demise of his most despised political rival, former president Carlos Menem.

Besides the Duhalde administration is clearly aligned with the new Brazilian outlook, almost opposite from the Menem days when Argentina's foreign policy was synthesized in "carnal relations" with Washington.

President Batlle also predicted that the Argentine electorate would be choosing Mr. Menem as the next president, something which seems far from possible, and led Mr. Kirchner, the front runner for May 18, to avoid Montevideo during his recent tour of the most "important neighbors" of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, leaving Uruguay out.

Mr. Kirchner's attitude was partly compensated with a visit from Argentine Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Martín Redrado, who represents a more moderate and pragmatic attitude in Argentine international trade relations.

Anyhow Mr. Batlle and Mr. Duhalde will have many other less controversial issues to talk about given the close interdependency of both countries.