South American trade summit founders
October 1, 2005
Brasilia - A South American trade summit barely got off the ground Friday, with the absence of key leaders and the opposition of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Leaders of South American nations, minus Argentina, Colombia, Guyana, Uruguay and Suriname, met in hopes of mounting a South American free-trade zone, but whose structure Chavez criticized as merely a union of Mercosur and the Andean Community, both free-trade areas.
"Those institutions need to disappear," Chavez said. "If we do not do that, we are doing nothing."
Mercosur comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, but only half of the members' presidents showed up. The Andean Community includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, whose president opposed the union.
Bolivia and Chile are already associate, non-voting members of Mercosur.
Still, the leaders present signed a declaration outlining a South American Community of Nations in which "coordination and political, diplomatic agreement affirming the region as a dynamic and discrete entity regarding its foreign relations is a primary goal of the CSN, which at this stage is expressed in terms of dialogue and exchange of information on matters of mutual interest."
However, they did not set a date for its founding.
The statement asked the rotating Mercosur and Andean secretaries to prepare a mechanism for melding the two trade blocs, with distinctly different philosophies. The Andean Community, founded three decades ago, later adopted, under the leadership of Colombia, language similar to US pacts with Mexico, Canada and Central America, with an eye toward joining a hemispheric free-trade zone. Mercosur negotiates on its own terms.
Brazil, which is nearly half of South America's economy, will hold the rotating presidency for the new bloc for the first year.
The presidents also set priorities for the new bloc: political dialogue; easing border restrictions; environment; sharing energy; internationalizing finance; telecommunications; social justice and inclusion; and addressing developmental differences in entering countries.
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos called for allowing lesser-developed nations to lower protections incrementally.
Also, the presidents recognized the importance of regional energy interdependence, and the formation of a South American oil company, Petroamerica, proposed by Venezuela and approved in principle by energy ministers in Caracas on Monday.
The resolution also sought closer trade ties with African and Arab countries.
The bloc is "17 million square kilometers (6.5 million square miles) with a combined economy of 1.2 trillion dollars, 361 million persons and would be the fifth-largest economy in the world," said Peru's President Alejandro Toledo, a US-trained economist.
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