MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New US Ambassador arrives in Argentina.

Lino Gutiérrez the new United States Ambassador in Argentina who arrived this week in Buenos Aires will be officially presenting his credentials to Foreign Affairs Secretary Rafael Bielsa tomorrow Wednesday.

Mr. Gutiérrez is a Cuban born career diplomat who joined the US Foreign Service in 1977 and has been posted in several Latinamerican countries, Europe and worked extensively in the State Department.

Between 1996 and 1999 Mr. Gutiérrez was ambassador in Nicaragua and organized the official visit of then President Bill Clinton. From 1999 until 2002 he worked at the National War College.

Previously he had been posted in Santo Domingo, Lisbon, Port Prince, Grenada, Paris and Nassau. He's an expert in Central American and Portuguese affairs and was head of the Political Planning Office and the Interamerican Affairs Coordination Office in the State Department.

He graduated from the universities of Miami and Alabama with a Master in Latinamerican Studies and has been repeatedly honoured in the State Department for his diplomatic and organizational skills.

Argentina has been without a US Ambassador for over six months since the departure of James Walsh who took office in July 2000. Actually under the Clinton administration Argentina had no US ambassador since the departure of James Cheek in late 1996 because the US Senate had blocked all his nominations.

On arrival in Buenos Aires Mr. Gutiérrez said that the US has always had a special consideration for Argentina and is confident the country "will recover from all the economic evils suffered in the last few years".

During the ten years of the Carlos Menem administration, and contrary to tradition, Argentina became a close ally of the United States with the Argentine president making it a point to have close links both with the Bush and Clinton families. Under former president Fernando de la Rúa relations cooled a bit as they did during the first months of caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde when Argentina defaulted.

However Mr. Duhalde and current president Nestor Kirchner received strong political support from the George W. Bush administration particularly in its dealings with the International Monetary Fund and other creditors.