MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguayan president plans round of visits to Mercosur neighbours

Cartes will also be attending the UN General Assembly next month

Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes will be making a round of visits to neighbouring countries beginning with Argentina, which will be followed by Brazil, Uruguay and Chile before the end of the year, revealed foreign ministry sources.

“The first visit is to Argentina, although there is no date yet. Brazil, Uruguay and Chile will follow” said the ministry sources pointing out that next September 11 Foreign minister Eladio Loizaga is expected in Buenos Aires to meet with his peer Hector Timerman to work out the agenda and arrangements for the Cristina Fernandez/Cartes meeting.

President Cristina Fernandez invited the Paraguayan leader to Buenos Aires to review all the issues of the bilateral agenda during her visit to Asuncion for the inauguration ceremony.

Since June 2012, when former president Fernando Lugo was removed from office following political impeachment in the Senate and replaced by Vice-president Federico Franco, Paraguay has been isolated from the region because Mercosur and Unasur reacted suspending the land-locked country.

The suspension was lifted last 15 August when Cartes took office who at his first press conference as president announced that in a ‘short time’ he was planning to travel to Brazil and was grateful Brasilia had requested the placet for its new ambassador in Asuncion.

Last week minister Loizaga announced that the new president would be attending the Unasur summit scheduled for 30 August in Suriname, but also pointed out that the Cartes administration would take its time regarding the resumption of relations with Mercosur, from which it is demanding an ‘institutional exit’ to the incorporation of Venezuela.

The incorporation was approved without the consent of Paraguay, as clearly specified in the group’s charter.

Loizaga also announced that president Cartes would be travelling to New York next month for the UN General Assembly annual meeting, September 24, with a three-day agenda that includes meetings with ‘heads of state from the region and European Union”.

In his inauguration speech Cartes did not mention the word Mercosur but talked about the need ‘to strengthen sub-regional and global groups’ and of his wishes to have ‘the best and beneficial relations with neighbouring countries’. 

Mercosur member presidents, Cristina Fernandez, Dilma Rousseff and Jose Mujica held private meetings with Cartes on (15 August) inauguration day, but not Venezuela (which was not invited and Paraguay does not accept as member), and comments from both sides were very fluid and positive.

Cristina Fernandez arrived to Asuncion with a copy of a decree by which Argentina returns spoils of the so called Triple Alliance war (1865/1870) when Paraguay was defeated by Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and which belonged to Mariscal Francisco Solano Lopez probably the most revered of Paraguayan national heroes.

Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff said it was an important meeting both for Paraguay and Mercosur since Asunción needs and benefits from soft-loans for infrastructure development.

Loizaga said at the time that Paraguay was not returning or re-incorporating to Mercosur because ‘we never abandoned Mercosur’, but insisted on bilateral talks with member countries before addressing Mercosur as a group.

Brazilian Foreign minister Antonio Patriota at the time was also satisfied since he said that the inauguration speech from President Cartes offered ‘clues’ for an improvement of relations with Mercosur, and Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro letter to Cartes congratulating him, also had ‘clues’ on which to follow and elaborate.