|
Argentina "needs" Brazil as a good trading partner on equal footing but not at any price, said Argentina's Deputy Secretary for Integration, Eduardo Sigal.
However Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim speaking from Paris indicated that the relation with Argentina "is the main priority" of Brazil's foreign policy and denied point blank Brasïlia pretends to become South America's leader.
Having borders with ten South American countries, "we need a policy for the whole region", added Mr. Amorim, who insisted that "this in no way reduces the strategic importance and priority Brazil extends to its relation with Argentina".
Mr. Amorim underlined that Argentina and Brazil have many common and joint positions in several issues, particularly international trade and recalled that both countries belong to the Group of 20 in the framework of the World Trade Organization.
Nevertheless he admitted that there could be some areas "where momentarily we have different visions".
Among those differences Mr. Amorim mentioned the approach towards Mercosur: while Argentina would like to see a greater integration emphasis inside the block, Brazil feels the objective should be a project of broader scope such as the South American Community of Nations, which also happens to be President Lula da Silva's obsession.
"We believe they are not contradictory projects, but rather issues that can move ahead together", highlighted Mr. Amorim who insisted there was no diplomatic rift between the two neighbours and blamed the press for publishing an alleged deterioration of bilateral relations.
"The majority of alleged Argentine criticisms I have never heard, rather I've read them in the newspapers".
Mr. Sigal said that "we need each other. Brazil is also recovering, but we don't want it to be at the expense of Argentina's development."
Further on he argued that "nobody can deny the importance of Brazil, its continental relationship with the ten countries it has borders, as well as devising policies of continental and worldwide scope" but this can't be "for free" or "at the expense of the development of other countries" in the region.
Brazil and Argentina, although politically allied in Mercosur have had continuous rifts regarding bilateral trade. Last year Argentina imposed safeguard tariffs on home appliances and other Brazilian exports to protect its industries.
Furthermore, in September Argentina proposed working out with Brazil a system of safeguards to address the "economic asymmetries" in the framework of their bilateral relation, but apparently to no avail.
Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa on Monday, May 2, complained the Brazilian government had not provided a "satisfactory response" to Argentina's proposal.
Mr. Sigal in a radio interview said Argentina demands Brazil "treats her as a partner", but questioned Brazil's attitude. "We've agreed to be partners. What we don't agree to is saying "yes, Brazil" to everything it devises or decides".
Buenos Aires analysts argue that longstanding trade disputes between the two Mercosur partners are not new, but Brazil now enjoys a comfortable surplus in bilateral trade, contrary to what happened during most of last decade when Argentina supplied oil and grains.
During the first four months of 2005, Brazil has accumulated a trade surplus with Argentina of US$ 900 million, equivalent to almost half the whole surplus of 2004, virtually the opposite to what happened during the nineties.
"This may seem problems are worse, but they have been there for years and growing against Argentina because the two nations' economies are so different in size", said Argentine economist Eduardo Curia.
This article appeared originally in Mercopress.
www.mercopress.com
 |
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.