
Intellectuals close to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner launched a campaign Tuesday to stop Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa from opening the Spanish-speaking world's largest cultural fair because of his disparaging remarks about Argentine politics.

Argentina’s January trade surplus in January confirmed the shrinking tendency increasingly present all along 2010 as imports’ growth outpaced exports by two to one.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner re-election bid is “inevitable” said cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez who nevertheless pointed out it was “premature” to talk about candidates for next October’s presidential election.

Uruguay and Argentina signed on Friday an agreement to build a re-gasification plant for liquid natural gas to help meet their energy needs. The floating re-gasification plant will supply the two nations with 10 million cubic meters a day of natural gas, scalable to 15 million, starting in 2013 according to an official statement.

Argentine Industry Ministry officials assured Wednesday that non-automatic licenses currently being applied to imports “in no way represent an obstacle for our Mercosur partners” and they have been implemented to monitor imports from outside the region.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced Friday that Argentina’s economy is 2010 expanded 9.1% and unemployment in the fourth quarter experienced a further drop and now stands at a record low of 7.3%.

Argentina and Brazil agreed Friday to set up a Monitoring Committee in order to exclude Brazilian products from being affected by the imports non-automatic licence system announced this week by the administration of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley assured that the US government “has no reason to apologize” to Argentina in the case of the “sensitive materials” that were seized in a US Air Force plane by the local government last week, amid accusations of “attempting to smuggle surveillance and communications equipment.”

Imports restrictions imposed this week by the Argentine government with the purpose of “preserving the re-industrialization process” cover approximately 200 products totalling annual imports of a billion US dollars, according to preliminary reports.

Argentine Judge Ezequiel Berón de Astrada requested on Tuesday Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman; Security Minister Nilda Garré; and the US Embassy “all the information they have” on the incident regarding the US Air Force plane seized in Ezeiza international airport.