MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina will attend Ibero-American summit next November in Spain

Jesus Gracia Aldaz made the announcement

Argentina will be attending the Ibero-American Summit to be held November 16/17 in the Spanish city of Cadiz confirmed the International Cooperation Secretary of State for Ibero-America, Jesús Gracia Aldaz.

“We have assured the presence of practically every head of state from Mexico to Brazil, from Chile to Central America. We have some doubts regarding Venezuela because of the electoral situation next October, but Argentina has confirmed attendance” said Gracia Aldaz.

However he did not confirm if President Cristina Fernandez would be travelling to the summit or Vice president Amado Boudou. Since the seizure by Cristina Fernandez of YPF from Repsol relations between Madrid and Buenos Aires are not at their best.

Gracia Aldaz indicated he was convinced the Ibero-American summit would function, even when “its success or failure will always be measured by the presence of heads of State”.

But one of the great advantages of this kind of events is that “heads of State have the chance to meet on their own and can speak openly and directly about certain issues that need a degree of discretion”.

Likewise as to the agenda of the meeting, “the contents will be very high level, from infrastructure problems to drugs, insecurity: all the issues and challenges that have emerged in the successive ministerial meetings”.

With that purpose Gracia Aldaz revealed that in recent months there has been a raft of meetings in Spain with different Latinamerican ministers: from cabinet chiefs to Interior, Industry, Commerce, Finance and “next week we’ll have all those with responsibility in employment and jobs”.

Gracia Aldaz strongly defended the Ibero-American summit describing it as “a space for dialogue, for family talks and to search for solutions to regional and bilateral problems which only come to underscore an existing reality: the intense and close network of relations of Latin America with Spain”.

Finally he recalled that despite other regional integration forums such as the Summit of the Americas or the EU/Latin America summit, “the Ibero-America event was the first to bring together back in 1991 the heads of state from Latin America, Spain and Portugal in their own environment”.