Mercosur

• Monday, July 7th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  End of the “submission taboo”.

  Argentine Chief of cabinet said that President Nestor Kirchner ended the “submission taboo” towards the International Monetary Fund, IMF that ruled Argentina's relations with the multilateral credit organization during the nineties

• Monday, July 7th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  IMF cuts Chile's growth estimate.

  In spite of praising the achievements of the Chilean economy, an IMF staff mission visiting Chile ended its tour lowering the country's growth estimate for 2004 from 4,8 to 4,5%.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Breaking News.

  Headlines:
  Insufficient inflation in Uruguay; Deflation in Argentina; Chile's inflation flat; Unexpected rise in US unemployment.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Police Chief of Argentine Province Sacked

  Authorities sacked the police chief for Buenos Aires province on Thursday, days after plans were announced to send more than 2.000 national guardsmen onto the streets to curtail a crime wave.

• Friday, July 4th 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Ex-generals acknowledge Pinochet-era exhumation

  Retired Chilean army generals, including members of ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's junta, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that secret graves of people who “disappeared” under the 1973-1990 dictatorship were later dug up in order to hide the bodies again.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Brazil: Good and bad news.

  Brazil managed a 10,2 billion US dollars trade surplus during the first half of 2003, in line with the government's target of annual overseas sales of 68 billion US dollars for the twelve months.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Argentine oil industry requests stable rules

  The drop in Argentina's oil and natural gas reserves, and the need for “clear and stable rules of the game” was highlighted during the “Hydrocarbons Congress 2003” that is currently taking place in Buenos Aires.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Who's to blame?

  An in depth United States Congressional paper from the Joint Economic Committee argues that some of the main reasons for the Argentine political crisis and the collapse of the economy lie in the fact that the country faced adverse international circumstances and its governments failed in the measures to confront them, “making things even worse”.

• Thursday, July 3rd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Buenos Aires seat of Antartic Treaty Secretariat

  Buenos Aires was officially designated as the seat of the permanent Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty during the XXVI Consulting Meeting held last June in Madrid, Spain.

• Wednesday, July 2nd 2003 - 21:00 UTC

  Mercosur cautious about CAP reforms.

  Mercosur countries reacted cautiously to the latest Common Agriculture Policy, CAP, agreement reached by the European Union after three weeks of hard bargaining. The gigantic sum of 43 billion Euros annually ploughed into EU farms will be substantially reduced and apparently reoriented as of 2005, towards a more environment friendly and quality agriculture.