CFK and Obama agree to solve trade differences

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her US counterpart Barack Obama held bilateral talks during the 6th Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

Argentina’s Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman said after the talks that Obama had expressed his will for Argentina and the US to remain “good friends and partners.” Timerman said both leaders met for 30 minutes. Télam said that Obama told the Argentine president that “all that we speak here is on the record and please tell the press that there were absolutely no trade demands.”

Fernández de Kirchner and Obama met at 19.45pm Argentine time, official sources said. The talks were open to all issues, sources said.

Obama requested the meeting ahead of the summit at a time Argentina is facing questions from industrialized nations about trade barriers and the situation of the oil company YPF, which is currently controlled by Spain’s Repsol. Argentina’s Ambassador to the United States Jorge Argüello said that the call for a bilateral meeting by the Obama administration after disagreements over trade was “the best news.” Argüello described the meeting as “auspicious.”

Yesterday’s bilateral talks came after a series of complaints on the trade front involving the US.

The United States dropped Argentina last month from its system of trade preferences, citing failure to pay court-ordered damages of 300 million plus interest to two US companies.

Until Argentina pays up, the country no longer qualifies under a US trade preferences law that enabled 477 million dollars in Argentine goods to enter the United States duty-free last year, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said.

Nearly all the world's countries get the US preferences. The decision left leaves Argentina in the company of Syria, Belarus and the rest of Sudan as the only countries not eligible.

Obama notified Congress of the move in a note that accused Argentina of "not acting in good faith."

Also last month, Argentina came under a barrage of criticism at the World Trade Organization, where the United States, the European Union, Japan and 10 other countries accused it of tying up imports in red tape.

CFK’s government has imposed a raft of sometimes unorthodox import restrictions in recent years as it battles to shield local industry and its trade surplus, which shrank 11 percent in 2011 to US$10.4 billion.

On February 1, the Fernández's de Kirchner administration imposed a new system to pre-approve, or reject, nearly every purchase from abroad.

The fate of the summit’s final declaration meanwhile has been thrown into uncertainty as the foreign ministers of Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay said Friday their presidents wouldn’t sign it unless the US and Canada removed their veto of future Cuban participation.

The left-leaning ALBA bloc of Latin American and Caribbean nations condemned the "unjustified and unsustainable exclusion of Cuba" in a statement issued in Cartagena. "We have decided not to take part in future Summits of the Americas if Cuba is not present," the ALBA statement said.

ALBA was set up in 2004 by Venezuela and Cuba to counter US influence in Latin America and now includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and the Caribbean islands of Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.