President Nicolas Maduro promised his Uruguayan counterpart Jose Mujica a “permanent” supply of petroleum from oil-rich Venezuela during the first leg of his visit to Mercosur member countries. Maduro also announced the signing of a strategic alliance in the energy sector with Uruguay.
Uruguay has formally requested Pope Francis to receive President Jose Mujica when he travels at the end of the month to China, Spain and Italy. Mujica is an agnostic and Uruguay is one of the few Latinamerican countries in which the Catholic Church has been separated from the State for almost a century.
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro begins next Tuesday an official one visit to Uruguay when he will be meeting with head of state Jose Mujica and former president Tabare Vazquez.On Wednesday he plans to fly to Argentina and the following day, Brazil.
President José Mujica said Uruguay “must always talk and maintain close relations with Argentina” following the recent controversy that flared up when he was caught by an open microphone calling Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez “the old lady” and her deceased husband Néstor Kirchner “the one-eyed.”
Argentine president Cristina Fernandez congratulated Paraguayan president-elect Horacio Cartes for his ample victory in Sunday’s election and said Mercosur was waiting for the return of the country to the trade block.
Sooner than expected Argentine President Cristina Fernandez seems to have accepted her Uruguayan peer Jose Mujica’s apologies following his coarse words: “this old lady is worse than the one-eyed man” to refer to the Argentine leader and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.
“We’re optimistic about Sunday’s election and the future of Paraguay if we can agree on long term state policies, but something is for certain: democracy in Paraguay is here to stay” said Ricardo Caballero Aquino, Chargé d’affaires of the Paraguayan embassy in Montevideo who was also positive about future relations with Unasur and Mercosur.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández will travel to Lima for a UNASUR meeting on Thursday in which regional countries are expected to express their support for the elections results in Venezuela and President elect Nicolas Maduro.
Uruguay’s Deputy Foreign minister Roberto Conde is scheduled to travel to Buenos Aires this week as part of President Jose Mujica’s administration efforts to rebuild bilateral relations with Argentina following his ‘coarse, jail-slang’ descriptions of president Cristina Fernandez and her late husband Nestor Kirchner, which were refuted as ‘unacceptable and denigrating”.
“My deepest apologies to those whom I might have hurt with my words in recent days” said Uruguayan president Jose Mujica in his daily broadcast on Thursday, the first public apology for the controversial expressions he used last week to refer to Argentine president Cristina Fernandez and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.