MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil moves towards permanent joint police force with Paraguay

There are ongoing operations against crime between the two countries but a joint police force with permanent members has never been created, Torres explained

Brazil and Paraguay have agreed to bolster their efforts against organized crime after Justice and Public Security Minister Anderson Torres visited his colleagues in Asunciuón Tuesday.

“The Strategic Alliance against Transnational Organized Crime is an initiative carefully elaborated by the Government of Brazil, which will integrate the talents of the security areas of the Southern Cone countries to intensify and accelerate the hard blows we are applying to organized crime regionally,” said Torres in a statement.

The Brazilian minister also underlined that although there were already ongoing joint operations with neighboring countries, an expanded group with permanent members has never been created.

Paraguay will be the first country to be invited, as it is the nation that works most closely with Brazil, it was explained.

Paraguay's Interior Minister Federico González told journalists that his Brazilian colleague will stay until Wednesday and will hold meetings with different authorities.

Torres began his agenda with a “courtesy visit” to President Mario Abdo Benítez at the López Palace (seat of the Executive). The meeting “revolved around strengthening the strategic alliance between the two countries in the fight against organized crime,” Paraguay's presidency said on Twitter that

González also admitted his country was interested in establishing a bipartite police cooperation command between the Paraguayan town of Carmelo Peralta and the Brazilian town of Porto Murtinho. These cities will be linked by an international bridge of the Bioceanic Route, a project that seeks to connect the Brazilian port of Santos, on the Atlantic, with the Chilean ports of Antofagasta and Iquique, on the Pacific, through Paraguayan and Argentinean territory.

Both countries had already agreed to install such a command on the border between Pedro Juan Caballero and Ponta Porã.