MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mujica in Argentina to discuss agenda of “mutual interest issues”

President elect Jose Mujica is expected to meet with Cristina Kirchner (Photo file)

Uruguayan president elect Jose Mujica travelled Tuesday to Buenos Aires to hold a meeting with her Argentine peer Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and other officials, confirming his promise that “we need a healthy and strong relation with Argentina”.

Before leaving Mujica left a recorded message in his usual radio program in which he underlined that “we must never forget that governments pass but peoples remain; and countries don’t move”.

During the electoral campaign Mujica repeatedly stated that “the best possible margin of understanding with Argentina” is a priority for Uruguay and “will be one of the objectives of my administration”.

Although the trip which apparently had been arranged sometime ago does not occur at the best moment given the current political turmoil in Buenos Aires over the Central bank reserves dispute, the agenda of issues includes power, dredging the access canals to the River Plate shared by the neighbouring countries, and the long standing dispute over pulp mills which has distanced the two governments.

“We have an agenda of mutual interest issues, several pending, one of them energy”, said Mujica who re-floated the Uruguayan project to build a liquefied re-gasification terminal in Montevideo.

“For such an undertaking we need a larger demand than the whole of Uruguay can provide and metropolitan Buenos Aires consumes and needs much more energy. Maybe we can agree to have the existing pipeline pump natural gas on the opposite direction, that is to Buenos Aires”, said Mujica.

The president elect did not specifically mention dredging the River Plate access canals or the dispute over the pulp mills but referred to them.

“Yes, we’ve had problems, problems which we need to solve and if we can’t do so, we must not commit the mistake of making them worse because they would sour relations even more”, said Mujica.

Finland’s Botnia built a huge pulp mill on the Uruguayan side of a shared river which Argentina protested alleging potential pollution problems and the fact it “wasn’t consulted about the undertaking”.

This was supported by Argentine pickets that have been blocking international bridges linking both countries for three years now.

Argentina took the case to the International Court of The Hague and a ruling is expected in the coming months.

Uruguay’s position under President Tabare Vazquez has been that no talks are possible until the pickets are lifted. The situation has become so irritating that even a “facilitating” effort by the Spanish crown to bring both sides together failed.

Although Mujica and Vázquez belong to the same ruling coalition, the president elect has distanced himself from that strong position and anticipated he would “discuss and discuss until candles burn out or a solution to the misunderstanding is found”.