MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OAS head denies the region is “turning left or right”

The Secretary General of the Organisation of American States Jose Miguel Insulza admitted tensions inside Mercosur but denied Latinamerican countries are increasingly divided over ideology.

"Bilateral contentions have increased and we must find a way to face these problems in a quick way", said Jose Miguel Insulza in an interview with the Financial Times who was asked about the pulp mills conflict between Argentina and Uruguay together with the Bolivian/Brazilian rift over the nationalization of gas and oil resources.

However he insisted that there has been "no turn left or right"; the region has acquired political stability and mature governance.

So far the only big change has taken place in Bolivia, and "we'll have to wait for election results in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela", added Mr. Insulza.

"When the left or the right wins in Europe nobody is worried about the destiny or direction of the whole continent. It's considered nonsense, and Latinamerica is no baby. There's a political process which must follow its course".

Nevertheless Mr. Insulza sharply criticised United States for moving too swiftly to condemn Ecuador over its decision to seize the assets of California-based Occidental Petroleum following a legal dispute.

"The US should have examined the case more carefully before deploring the move and suspending trade talks between the two countries", he underlined.

Mr. Insulza argued that given the circumstances, Ecuador had a right to take over Occidental Petroleum assets and put them under the country's oil company Petroecuador.

But, the US reaction only causes animosities and "this is not good for the hemisphere".