South American defense ministers gathered in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus on Thursday to discuss how to improve monitoring of the huge Amazon region. Attending the seminar which runs through Friday are Brazil's Celso Amorim, Colombia's Juan Carlos Pinzón and Ecuador's María Fernanda Espinosa.
Conservative businessman Horacio Cartes was sworn in as president of Paraguay on Thursday, amid slowly improving relations with South American neighbors, and Mercosur members, damaged by the 2012 removal of populist President Fernando Lugo, who was impeached on incompetence.
The Union of South American Nations, Unasur, decided late Friday to lift the suspension pending on Paraguay, which will become effective next 15 August when president-elect Horacio Cartes takes office.
President Cristina Fernandez, CFK, used the opportunity of Argentina at the rotating chair of the United Nations Security Council to demand an end to the veto power of its five permanent members (United States, Russia, China, Britain and France), and criticize the UK refusal to engage in Falkland Islands sovereignty discussions.
Argentine president Cristina Fernandez visited on Monday afternoon United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and called for a restructuring of multilateral organisations in order to improve performance, using as an example regional body Unasur (Union of South American Nations).
Influential Latin American newspapers have been extremely critical of Brazilian diplomacy in its unsuccessful attempts to ‘subdue Paraguay’, while at the same praising the landlocked country’s dignity in demanding from Mercosur respect and compliance with the rule of the law.
Paraguayan president Federico Franco replied to his Uruguayan peer Jose Mujica ironic remarks saying that ‘evidently he’s good at geography; I guess he passed with the highest grades’ since he is aware that Paraguay is a landlocked ‘Mediterranean’ country.
President Rafael Correa said that the determining factor for Ecuador to join as full member of Mercosur or the Alliance of the Pacific is the ‘flexibility’ granted in certain admission conditions, taking into account the fact that Ecuador does not have a national currency.
The Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said on Wednesday that Paraguay should return to Mercosur because “it’s not good to have exclusions in South America”, but insisted that the solution to the problem is in the hands of the ‘protagonists’ and not in president elect Horacio Cartes.
The Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, met with Paraguayan president Federico Franco at the start of his two-day official visit to Asunción.