Lower House candidates for the Civic Accord, Margarita Stolibizer and Alfonso Prat Gay blasted a meeting between Vice-President Julio Cobos, one of the members of the accord, and their rival in the Unión-PRO Francisco De Narváez.

"The meeting was inappropriate," Prat Gay told interviewers on a local radio station.

Meanwhile, Stolbizer said she "didn't like the meeting at all."Cobos must certainly give explanations," she concluded.

The Unión-PRO candidate meet with Vice-President Julio Cobos in his Senate office yesterday. After the 40-minute get together De Narváez told journalists that Cobos expressed his "sympathy" toward him, adding that the judge should not have acted as he has "in the middle of the campaign."

Asked about the timing of his meeting with the vice-president, De Narváez replied that "those who want to make political speculations are free to do so."

Cobos today justified his decision to meet with De Narváez, and said "its the duty of every government official to receive lawmaker, regardless of the party they come from," he said.

"In a democracy, dialogue is always a priority," the vice-president stated in a communiqué released this afternoon. "To consider politics in terms of friend and foes is a thing of the past," he claimed.

Tensions between Cobos and the candidates of the Social and Civic Accord have been mounting, only weeks ahead of the mid-term elections. According to reports, the vice-president does not hide his differences with the "official" line of the Radical party, which expelled him in 2007 after he said he would support President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 2007 election, and he is no longer in speaking terms with the chairman of the party, Gerardo Morales.

Cobos' loyalist Luis Menucci today defended the decision of the vice-president to meet De Narváez, claiming the former "could not deny De Naváez's request for a meeting." Menucci said that the Social and Civic Accord would "come to an end after the June 28 elections."

"Cobos is playing an institutional role, discussing his initiative with all the sectors and he cannot deny a request for a meeting if De Narváez requests one," Menucci concluded.

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