President Alberto Fernández will lead the Argentine delegation to the Mercosur Summit, which will be held next week in Montevideo and in which his country will assume the pro tempore presidency for the first half of 2023.
Fernández’s will be the first trip outside Argentina after the tour that took him to France, Indonesia -for the G20 Summit- and Spain, and in which he suffered an illness for which, later, he remained at rest and without public activity in Buenos Aires.
Sources consulted by EFE reported that the foreign minister, Santiago Cafiero, and the former candidate for the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Cecilia Todesca will accompany the president for the summit that will be held in the Uruguayan capital from Monday and that is expected to be tense. after the movements of the partners in the last hours.
Cafiero and Todesca, Secretary for International Economic Relations at the Foreign Ministry, will participate on Monday in the meetings of the foreign ministers in preparation for the presidential summit, which will take place next Tuesday and in which Argentina will receive the pro tempore presidency from the hands of Uruguay.
Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, Uruguay’s partners in Mercosur, threatened Montevideo this Wednesday, through a joint statement from the three Foreign Ministries, with adopting retaliatory measures if it insists on negotiating a free trade agreement outside the bloc.
Uruguay’s partners explained their position regarding “the measures of the Uruguayan Government aimed at the individual negotiation of trade agreements with tariff dimensions” in light of the intention, ratified last morning, to request their adherence to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). ).
The free trade area that Uruguay asked to join in the last hours has Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam as partners.
«The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Bustillo, has just formally submitted the application to join the CPTPP in New Zealand. More opportunities for our country and our people. A Uruguay open to the world,” the President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, wrote on his Twitter account.
Hours before, he had warned his bloc partners that Uruguay was protected by “international law” and that, although he understood the claim of the three countries, he did not share it.
EFE Agency.
