herald staff

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner yesterday travelled to Ecuador to participate in the meeting of the UNASUR Union of South American Nations. She will also attend the ceremony in which Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa will be sworn in for a second term.
Fernández de Kirchner departed yesterday afternoon in the Tango 01 presidential plane, together with Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana and Entre Ríos Governor Sergio Urribarri, among other government officials.
Today morning, she is expected to attend Correa’s swearing-in ceremony and a lunch the Ecuadorean leader will offer at the Government Palace in Quito, the capital.
During a ceremony with the presidents of the South American nations, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet is expected to hand over the temporary chair of the UNASUR organization to Correa.
The leaders — including Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, Bolivian president Evo Morales and Peruvian president Alan García — will then hold a meeting in which they are expected to discuss the introduction of US troops in Colombian military bases.
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe meanwhile will not attend the summit, in disagreement with Da Silva’s request to summon the UNASUR’s Defence Council to discuss the military agreement Colombia is negotiating with the United States, his foreign ministry reported.
The coup that took place in Honduras on June 28 and the political crisis in that Central American country are also on the summit’s agenda.
On Tuesday, Fernández de Kirchner will travel to Caracas, Venezuela, where she is expected to meet with Chávez as part of the encounters the leaders agreed to hold every three months to discuss bilateral issues. They would treat Chávez’s intention of replacing Colombian beef and dairy exports with Argentine supplies. Fernández de Kirchner would also seek to increase cars, medicines, and food exports to Venezuela.
She is also scheduled to take part in a seminar with 70 Argentine businessmen, seeking to broker deals and invest in Venezuelan companies. The President would return to the country on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, health ministers from the UNASUR countries yesterday agreed to purchase vaccines for the swine flu together. In this way, they would obtain cheaper prices and guarantee all the countries’ populations has access to the vaccines, they informed.
Argentine Health Minister Juan Manzur said that “there are some developed countries with a high purchasing power that have already committed themselves to acquire an important number of doses, so we are requesting a fair distribution of the vaccines among the population, taking their needs into account.”
Manzur added that they are also asking “priorities to be set, because if the most developed countries buy all the shots, then there won’t be any left for the rest of the countries.”
Manzur also informed he had agreed to work together with Bolivia to fight the spread of dengue.
“We held a meeting with (Bolivian Health Minister Jorge) Tapia, who has a lot of experience on the subject, and we’ve coordinated a joint activity on both borders, which will be developed next week,” Manzur said.
Tapia meanwhile said: “we have great objectives in common and a long border we have to take care of and preserve, and that is why we have to carry out a joint work.”

With DyN, Télam