MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur summit committed to advance trade negotiations with Europe

Mrs. Kirchner, Mercosur pro tempore chair for the next six months

Mercosur is committed to advance trade negotiations with the European Union and expects to have drafted a viable position when leaders from Latinamerica and the Caribbean meet with their European Union counterparts next May for the Madrid summit.

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said that was one of the main understandings reached at the Mercosur presidential summit held in Montevideo and which ended Tuesday with the block’s chair passing from Uruguay to Argentina for the next six months.

At the press conference at the end of the summit deliberations next to Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez, Mrs. Kirchner also said the block had strongly rejected Honduran elections and expects Venezuela will soon become a full member of Mercosur.

“We would like before starting to congratulate the Uruguayan people and the Bolivian people for their magnificent democratic electoral processes which have seen our good friend Jose Pepe Mujica elected president and Evo Morales re-elected in Bolivia, two democratic examples of the region and the very opposite of what recently happened in Honduras under a de facto government”.

Besides host Vazquez and Mrs. Kirchner the summit convened President Lula da Silva from Brazil; Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo; Colombian Vice-president Francisco Santos and representatives from associate member countries whose leaders were unable to attend.

“We have integration and cooperation agreements with the European Union but some sectors such as services, government purchases and other commercial aspects still present difficulties”, said Mrs. Kirchner.

She pointed out that the focus will be “to advance and consolidate those areas where we can agree and address the others gradually, instead of starting to talk on what we disagree”.

“I think in Madrid we won’t have a full agreement but should help us reach important conclusions for the region. They need us, we need them”, said the Argentine president that will be chairing Mercosur for the following six months.

Mrs. Kirchner preferred not to talk about the pulp mills conflict between Uruguay and Argentina when she was asked if with incoming president elect Mujica a quick solution could be articulated.

“I think it is inappropriate to talk about an issue in a multilateral meeting. Thank your for the question”, was the sharp reply.

Uruguayan president Vazquez adopted a similar attitude saying it was better to transit along the “wide positive avenue of links and understandings between our countries rather than concentrate on a minor discord”. He also recalled that 300.000 Uruguayans have made Argentina their home.

The conflict over the construction of pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of a shared river with Argentina has been ongoing now for three years and has reached the International Court of The Hague.