MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Guess who came for lunch?

The United States Embassy in Uruguay strongly denied this Tuesday that a US official stated before Uruguayan union leaders that the left wing coalition, Frente Amplio, (Broad Front) would win the coming presidential elections of next October.

"The US Embassy was not the source of this information. Comments made during a private lunch by a US Embassy official were wrongly interpreted plus being personal, and they do not reflect the position of the US Embassy or the government of the United States", indicated an official release from the Embassy.

Local press reports indicated that the political and economic counsellor of the US Embassy in Montevideo Oliver Griffith, during lunch with four trade union leaders, stated that the Broad Front was forecasted to win the coming presidential election.

The Broad Front is a heterogeneous grouping comfortably leading in all opinion pools that includes former guerrilla members; Marxist oriented groupings, left wing radicals, Socialists, moderate centre groups and Christian Democrats.

However the lunch meeting has not only created problems for the US Embassy: the Broad Front that insists in presenting a moderate centre line, has been questioned and criticized by extreme left grouping for endorsing such a meeting.

"We've been publicly lynched" remarked Communist union leader Juan Castillo one of the participants of the meeting.

Carlos Gamou spokesperson for the Popular Participation Movement whose leaders are mainly former Tupamaro urban guerrillas of the sixties and early seventies were adamant about the radical condemnation: "We don't stand for any criticism from the right wing, and we will not stand for any other criticism, no matter from where they come".

If the Broad Front, created in 1971, effectively wins the October presidential election it will mean an end to bipartisan power sharing in Uruguay and the first time ever since 1830 when the country became independent, that the two historical parties, (Colorado and Nacional) will be out of office.

Fears are that a landslide victory for the Broad Front next October could lead to inside bickering with radicals and extremists who loathe "US imperialism", thus eroding the strength of the coalition and popular expectations. A phenomenon similar to that suffered by Brazilian president Lula da Silva and his Workers Party.