MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Union of S. American Nations ready for launching

The presidential summit for the launching of the Union of South American nations, Unasur, will take place March 28/29 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, said Colombian Foreign Affairs minister Fernando Araujo.

"A meeting of presidents is scheduled for that date in Cartagena and we hope that the treaty will be approved which is an effort from the whole region in search of a more intense integration". "We're drafting the Nations of the South Union treaty which we expect to have ready for the end of March" for approval by the twelve presidents added Araujo. The original summit was scheduled for January but was postponed at the last meeting of delegates which took place in Chile in November 2007. Last January and at a meeting of Foreign Affairs ministers in Cartagena the Constitutive Treaty was ironed out with all the foundations for integration, its nature and extent as well as the institutional structure. The first presidential summit on the issue was in Brasilia in 2005, where the agenda and action program was decided. In the second meeting in Bolivia in 2006, presidents agreed on the delegates' council to implement presidential and ministerial decisions. Unasur actually was born in December 2004 in Cuzco, Peru as the South American Community of Nations which had among other objectives the convergence of Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations, CAN. Another objective was the physical, energy and communications integration in South America as well as harmonizing of rural development policies, agro-business and cooperation in all fields of science, education and culture. On April 16/17 last year in the island of Margarita, Venezuela, during the first Sout American Energy Summit it was announced that efforts for regional integration would be identified as Unasur with its permanent Secretariat in the city of Quito, Ecuador.