Presidents from El Salvador, Brazil, Chile, Panama and Colombia figure among the Latinamerican leaders with the highest ratings of support and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in the bottom short list with 23%, according to the respected Mexican pollster Mitofsky Consultants, MC.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi proposed a military alliance mirroring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to counteract the influence of the US and Europe during the second Africa-South America summit held over the weekend in Margarita island, Venezuela and which convened almost sixty leaders.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva said on Sunday his nation would not comply with a demand from Honduras' de facto government to decide the status of ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 10 days.
The presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, signed on Saturday night an agreement establishing the South Bank with an initial capital of 20 billion U.S. dollars.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on the situation in the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras, where ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has been sheltering since Monday. The council condemned acts of intimidation and called on the de-facto Honduran authorities to stop harassing the embassy.
A report from the US Library of Congress legal branch released this week concluded that the ousting of elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was “legal and constitutional”.
The coming electoral year makes it difficult for the Brazilian congress to approve in the short term the agreement reached with Paraguay referred to the surplus energy from the world’s largest operational hydroelectric dam Itaipú, signed last July by presidents Lula da Silva and Fernando Lugo.
A recent survey by the Cisco Latin America Broadband Barometer showed that Chile has the highest percentage of broadband Internet connections in South America. The study found that 9.7% of Chile’s population has access to broadband.
Ecuador is considering the purchase of 12 Atlas Cheetah C fighter bombers from South Africa, according to Defence minister Javier Ponce in an interview with Quito’s newspaper El Universal.
The activity displayed by ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa has triggered controversy in Brazil’s political establishment and uncertainty about diplomatic jargon such as the extent of the “refuge” condition.