MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez praises defence cooperation with Argentina, making Mercosur a military power block

The Venezuelan president at the military ceremony

President Hugo Chavez underlined the significance of the defence cooperation memorandum signed between Venezuela and Argentina which is part of “the necessary strategic integration of the armed forces in the framework of Mercosur and turning the block into a military power”.

“It is an important strategic alliance to lift the immense offensive, dissuasive capacity from the block which begins at the Caribbean and reaches Patagonia and the Argentine Malvinas Islands, which are now our Islas Malvinas, they are now a regional claim”, underlined Chavez.

Last Friday the defence ministers from Argentina and Venezuela signed in the port of La Guaira on board Argentina’s tall ship ARA Libertad a memorandum of understanding which refers to the training, capability and military manufacturing technology as part of the “necessary strategic integration of the Armed Forces in the framework of Mercosur”.

During a military ceremony over the weekend at the Military University, Chavez also underlined the significance of Venezuela‘s incorporation to Mercosur, the block which he also described as “a military power in the region”.

Chavez boasted that despite repeated efforts from the Venezuelan bourgeois and the Paraguayan congress, “they missed the shot because now we are the Armed Forces of Mercosur: a great economic and geo-political impact for the region to help defend our resources, combat colonialism”.

However the Venezuelan leader also spoke about the need to consolidate the region as a democratic, anti-colonialist space of democracies where the peoples prevail.

“We must consolidate a great peace zone in the Caribbean and in South America; a zone of democracy where never again will there be military coups, or invasion or imperialisms, but also a space where only our peoples in their most pure democratic expression and through legitimate governments can decide their future”.