|
Unasur, the Union of South American Nations, will debate the creation of four ministerial councils on narcotics-traffic, infrastructure, culture and education and social development during the summit hosted by Ecuador, which begins this Monday.
According to a release from the Brazilian presidency the four new councils will complement the existing ones on health and defense, which were created at the last summit in Costa de Sauipe, in northeaster Brazil, last December.
The Unasur summit takes off next Monday in Quito when Ecuador receives the pro-tempore presidency of the organization from Chile.
The creation of a Council to combat narcotics-traffic will enable the region to discuss how to counter the drugs trade "precisely when this issue and matters of regional defense have emerged in the regional debate," said Marcelo Baumbach, spokesperson for the Brazilian presidency.
"President Lula believes that the most appropriate forum for this discussion is Unasur, given its characteristics and the importance that the organization is gaining in solving the crisis in the region," added Baumbach.
The Unasur summit coincides with a serious controversy in the region following Colombia's announcement that it will allow the deployment of US forces in seven bases of its territory to help combat the drugs business.
Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia have been the most critical of the military understanding between Bogotá and Washington. Ecuador and Venezuela were excluded from the recent tour of South America by Colombian president Alvaro Uribe to explain details of the deal to his peers.
Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Colombia in March last year following a military incursion against a camp belonging to the Colombian cocaine funded guerrilla movement FARC in Ecuadorian territory.
President Uribe and his Foreign Affairs minister Jaime Bermúdez have decided not to participate in the Quito summit next Monday.
The agreement with Washington includes the deployment of 800 US men and equipment in seven Colombian bases under Colombian Defense ministry control.
The move is partly consequence of the forced relocation of a similar agreement in the Ecuadorian Air Force base of Manta, but which President Rafael Correa, refused to extend.
The purpose of the Manta base was for US air surveillance and monitoring of the drug cartels in the region.
Under a long standing agreement between Colombia and the US, Washington can deploy up to 800 men in advisory tasks in Colombia; currently there are 200.
During this week's visit to seven South American presidents, Uribe received mixed support: from Peru, Paraguay and Chile's acceptance of Colombia's sovereign decisions, to Bolivia, critical of the decision; Argentina which downplayed the controversy; Uruguay that appealed to two basic principle: non interference in internal affairs and no foreign military bases in the region, and Brazil which proposed that the drug traffic issues be addressed by a special committee from the region.
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.