Santiago media reports increasing disappointment in the Chilean government and private sector with the latest batch of Argentine measures to restrict imports and want the issue ‘top of the agenda’ when President Cristina Fernandez visits Chile at the end of the month.
Chile declared a public health alert this week over a hantavirus outbreak that has killed three people and infected at least 10 others and which have been blame of the wildfires of a very hot summer.
The 50th anniversary of the US trade embargo against Cuba on Tuesday was met with little fanfare on the island, where Cubans said it was a failed policy that had succeeded only in making their lives more difficult.
Peru’s former Foreign Affairs minister, Jose Antonio Garcia-Belaunde, says it is unlikely that Peru would back Argentina if there were a new conflict with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands, newspaper El Comercio reported.
Bacteria that can resist nearly all antibiotics have been found in Antarctic seawater, reports the New Scientist.
Lawmaker Ivan Moreira from the ruling coalition junior partner UDI said that Chile should not get involved in the Falklands/Malvinas issue which has to be addressed between Argentina and the UK, and recalled that Chile has its own problem with the coming International Court of Justice dispute with neighbouring Peru.
“We are well aware that Chile has a different position to us regarding the Falklands and this we understand, but it must be the Islanders who determine their political future, not London, not Buenos Aires or third countries”, said UK ambassador in Chile Jon Benjamin in an interview with the Chilean media.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Argentine president Cristina Fernandez are expected to visit Chile in the near future as pressure mounts on the conservative government of President Sebastian Piñera because of the ongoing UK/Argentina diplomatic dispute over the Faklands/Malvinas issue.
Surinam and the Caribbean island of Santa Lucia are in the process of becoming full members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of America, ALBA group, while Haiti has been nominated “standing invited member”.
“Chile’s support to Argentina’s claim over the Malvinas Islands is a state policy for our country” said Chilean Executive secretary Andres Chadwick, but it does not mean any impediment to that “very special relation we have with the UK”.