MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur Army commanders meet in Chile

The Bolivian Army will be participating this week in a meeting of Mercosur Army Staff Commanders in Chile with the purpose of coordinating cooperation in peace operations and international humanitarian aid.

Bolivian Commander in Chief of the Army General Freddy Bersatty said the meeting will take place in Viña del Mar, Valparaiso and Santiago, March 7/11, and is scheduled to consider a draft statute for a Mercosur Army Staff Commanders Committee.

Participants in the coming meeting include Mercosur diplomats and Army commanders from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela and Chile.

General Bersatty said the meeting will address cooperation mechanisms for peace operations and international programs for emergency and disaster situations.

"Let's hope that in Chile we can find ways to make future military meetings more agile, facilitating the achievement of targets and agreements", added General Bersatty.

Huge fire in building housing Chilean Defense Ministry

The Diego Portales building is also one of the capital's main convention centers. The blaze, which was evidently the result of an electrical fault, erupted at 1945 GMT on Sunday in the east wing of the building and spread a dense pall of smoke - reported to be toxic - throughout central Santiago some 10 blocks east of the La Moneda presidential palace.

The flames were concentrated in the convention center area of the structure. Part of that area collapsed 30 minutes after the fire began, and a convention hall and nearby offices in that portion of the building were reported to be a total loss.

Authorities said that nobody was killed or injured in the blaze, and police told to the press that that portion of the building where the fire was concentrated was deserted at the time.

Marcelo Muñoz, the official responsible for fire prevention in the building, said that the blaze broke out because of an electrical failure. He admitted that the building's fire protection system did not operate as planned due to "lack of maintenance," adding that the structure's electrical system was also deficient as a result of "budgetary problems." Volunteers from about a dozen firefighting units who sped to the scene to battle the flames primarily tried to make sure the fire did not spread to the building's main 18-story tower, which houses the Defense Ministry. There were no reports of any damage to the ministry's facilities or offices.

Defense Minister Jaime Ravinet, the governor of Santiago, Ximena Rincon, and the assistant secretary of the navy, Gonzalo Garcia, all came to the site to begin assessing the damage, the value of which has not yet been quantified.

The building was constructed during the government of the late President Salvador Allende, who governed from 1970-73, to be the site for the 1972 U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) convention.

Later, the building was dubbed the Gabriela Mistral building and used for cultural activities and as a site for other conventions, but after the 1973 coup d'etat, it was used for a time by the military junta headed by Augusto Pinochet as the regime's headquarters.

The La Moneda palace had been heavily damaged in air assaults during the coup, and so it could not be used at first to house the country's top government personnel. The military regime then named the building after Diego Portales and located the Defense Ministry there.