MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan congress approves Venezuela's Mercosur membership

The Uruguayan Congress with the sole vote of the ruling coalition members approved Thursday the incorporation of Venezuela to Mercosur. This makes Uruguay the first country in the block to have complied with the incorporation procedure for the new member.

The procedure begun last Tuesday in the Senate and was completed early dawn Thursday in the Lower House following an acrimonious debate with the opposition which claimed the exceptionally fast approval was done to "please President Hugo Chavez" who arrives Friday in Montevideo for the Ibero-American summit.

The Lower House approval was voted at 04:10 in the morning with the only presence of the ruling coalition members of parliament since the opposition groups abandoned the House to protest the expeditious procedure which even "ignored consideration in the Foreign Affairs committee".

Uruguayan opposition parties have consistently criticized President Tabare Vazquez for supporting Venezuela's incorporation to Mercosur and have warned that President Hugo Chavez pursues a "confrontational foreign policy".

"President Chavez is going to be responsible for the fracture of Latinamerica", claimed Senator Jorge Larrañaga leader of the Uruguayan opposition main party underlining that the "Caribbean stridency only means trouble for the region and Uruguay".

However Senator Jose Korzeniak from the ruling coalition praised the Parliament's decision recalling Venezuela has invested in a Uruguayan bank and has been "particularly generous with oil contract conditions", among other projects.

The Mercosur block made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay approved Venezuela's membership at the end of 2005. The Chavez administration has helped Uruguay with loans, awards and investments to the tune of 393 million US dollars in the last twelve months.

Besides investing in a bank, Venezuela has helped reopen a sugar mill, a tire factory and reequip a modern glass bottling plant. A non refundable loan has been extended to the Medicine School hospital and Uruguay has also benefited from the oil for local produce exchange program. An initiative that has been useful for Uruguay that has no hydrocarbons and imports all the oil and gas it consumes.