(Editor’s note: The following “hard hitting” interview with U.S. President Barack Obama appeared in the Santiago’s Sunday El Mercurio edition.) Obama arrives in Chile Monday, from Brazil, as part of his Latin American visit that also includes El Salvador.
Disappointed and shocked with the self-centred performance of President Cristina Kirchner at the G-20 summit in Washington in 2008, a group of powerful countries seriously considered kicking Argentina out of the industrialized and emerging countries’ Group of Twenty.
US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley resigned after reports that he labelled as stupid and ridiculous the Pentagon's treatment of a US soldier accused of leaking secret documents that appeared on the WikiLeaks website.
Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK) behind doors in Government House criticized her peer from Venezuela Hugo Chavez saying “he speaks before stopping to think” and praised US president Barack Obama insisting she was interested in having “closer relations with United States”, according to the latest revelations from Wikileaks.
Although in public former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner was supportive of Uruguay’s negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, members of his cabinet warned the US embassy in Buenos Aires that Argentina would block such an initiative in Mercosur, according to the contents of several Wikileaks cables published in Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
While offering a press conference in Washington DC, US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley refused to comment on the recently released Wikileaks cables that mention Argentina and said his government would refrain from doing so in the future.
Former Uruguayan Industry and Energy Minister, Jorge Lepra (*), described Néstor Kirchner’s government as ”fascist”, during a meeting with the US Embassy Chargé D'Affaires at Uruguay, James Nealon, in February 14, 2006, according to a cable revealed by Wikileaks in which Nealon reported to Washington the minister’s harsh words.
Wikileaks cables last week revealed that the U.S. Embassy in Santiago pressured Chilean government officials in 2009 to change environmental rules so that a controversial thermoelectric plant could be built.
United States considers Mercosur as an “anti American” organization and fears the incorporation of Venezuela to the group made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay according to one of the latest Wikileaks to see light in the River Plate press.
A British court has agreed to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden where he is accused of sex crimes, dismissing claims such a move would breach his human rights.