|
Mexican President, Vicente, Fox has been invited to participate in the Montevideo December Mercosur summit but there's no official confirmation of his presence, revealed Mexican Ambassador in Uruguay, Perla Carvalho.
During the coming summit Venezuela is scheduled to become a full member of Mercosur and President Hugo Chavez has confirmed his participation. Uruguayan Foreign Affairs Minister Reynaldo Gargano said that President Tabare Vazquez had extended the invitation to President Fox during the recent Summit of the Americas, which was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
However it was during that summit that Mexico and Venezuela had loud discrepancies over the US sponsored Free Trade Areas of the Americas, which led to irritating remarks from both sides, particularly President Chavez who called his Mexican counterpart a "US puppy" doing the dirty job for the empire.
As a result both governments recalled their ambassadors and Mexico went further accusing Venezuela of harboring the drug trade particularly with the Mexican cartels.
The idea of having Mexico join Mercosur is not new and had been considered some time ago when Mexican Foreign Affairs minister Luis Ernesto Derbez visited the region.
Mr. Gargano said that the full incorporation of Venezuela to Mercosur had received a "positive reply" from Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina that "is handling all the documentation on the matter".
"Venezuela will therefore, following the unanimous political support, become immediately a full member of Mercosur", underlined Mr. Gargano.
President Vazquez during a meeting with opposition Senators said Uruguay's strategy was to bring Mexico and Venezuela together again, and insist in the incorporation of Mexico, Latinamerica leading economy.
"We need Mexico in Mercosur to counterbalance Brazil, and even oil rich Venezuela", argued Mr. Vázquez.
Uruguay's main opposition party has reserves about Venezuela's incorporation given President Hugo Chavez "confrontation policy" and the fact that the country already is member of the Andean Community.
"It's an incorporation that could stimulate bilateralism among Mercosur major countries", said Senator Jorge Larrañaga, leader of the National Party.
Mr. Gargano said Mercosur would do "every thing possible so that this situation (between Mexico and Venezuela) rapidly dilutes with time and cordial relations are re-established between the two countries".
"We're very much interested in having no disputes in the region and that neighbors get along", he insisted adding that there's no mediation planned...or discarded".
As to attempting to bridge the delicate situation between Mexico and Venezuela, the Montevideo press recalled that Mr. Gargano was not precisely the man with the best credentials for the task.
A few months ago when Mercosur managed to impose, in a much contested assembly, the Chilean candidate Miguel Insulza as Secretary General of the Organization of American States, OAS, defeating Mexican hopeful Mr. Debez, Mr. Gargano during a conference in the National University hailed Mercosur unity saying "in spite of all the pressure, we managed to defeat the empire's candidate".
The "empire's candidate" was obviously Mr. Derbez from Mexico. 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.