MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“We are building a global role for Argentina”, says CFK after meeting Obama

Mrs. Kirchner and Obama during the nuclear summit

“We are building a global role for Argentina that it did not have until now” said Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK) following a meeting with US President Barack Obama Tuesday in the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.

Mrs. Kirchner said that the US President told her that “Argentina is a very important character” for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

She added that Obama asked her how the economy issues were, “I told him that it has not been so bad in 2009; that we managed to keep the unemployment rates in one digit.”

The imminent Argentine re-launching of the debt swap was another issue which the two presidents talked about.

Mrs. Kirchner announced that the next “sherpas'” nuclear energy summit will be held in Buenos Aires. “Sherpas” are the coordinators designated by the countries that are in charge of preparing the leaders' summit and develop technical documents that will be later analyzed during the presidential encounters.

“These are steps to place Argentina where it deserves to be. From our own identity we approve or disapprove several issues. It's what I consider a real foreign policy,” concluded the President.

Earlier Tuesday, she took part of the opening ceremony, where Obama welcomed his pairs and they all joined him for the classic Summit official photograph.

Obama called the danger of a nuclear terrorist attack “a cruel irony” after the end of the Cold War.

After sharing a brief informal chat with President Kirchner, he opened the Summit by claiming that “the risk of a nuclear attack had increased” and mentioned current extremist groups, such as Al-qaeda, before representatives coming from 46 different countries.

On her trip to the US, President Cristina Kirchner was joined by Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, the Argentine Ambassador to the United States, Héctor Timmerman and governors Daniel Scioli (Buenos Aires) and José Alperovich (Tucumán) and former president and lawmaker Néstor Kirchner.