Lima, Sept. 23, 2005.- "Andean integration is not a walled fortress but, on the contrary, aspires to be an active platform for the Andean Community countries’ competitive participation in world trade,” CAN Secretary General, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón, emphasized today.

He made this statement at the opening ceremony of the Regional Seminar “Andean Community World Trade Participation Scenarios,” held to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Institute for Latin American and Caribbean Integration (INTAL), and attended also by Christof Kuechemann, IDB Representative in Peru and Ricardo Carciofi, INTAL Director.

Wagner stressed that the Andean Community has had a binding Community law (Decision 598) in effect since July 2004, authorizing the Member Countries to negotiate trade agreements with third countries or country blocs “within a framework coherent with the deepening of the Andean integration process.” He went on to underscore that one of the explicit objectives of the Cartagena Agreement is “the gradual formation of a Latin American market.” (Art. 1º of the CAN constitutive treaty).

In reviewing the different possibilities for Andean participation in world trade, he stated that the United States is the most important Andean export market, accounting for almost 41% of total sales, but that there are also other scenarios, like the European Union, which receives 11% of sales, the MERCOSUR and the Central American Common Market, which are also extremely interesting potential markets.

He explained that not all of the negotiations with third parties have to do exclusively with trade, as in the case of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement and a Specialized High-Level Dialogue on the Drug Mechanism with the European Union. The South American Community of Nations, for its part, is a major political project and a huge decentralized development program based on the IIRSA hubs, which has a large social content. In the case of Central America, there are important geopolitical considerations, together with the potential offered by energy and infrastructure development.

He pointed out that the scenarios for subregional participation in world trade are not exclusive, but complement each other within a framework of new openings to development opportunities and possibilities for improving the people’s welfare.

In concluding, Wagner explained that the CAN General Secretariat wished to join in the celebration of INTAL’s 40th anniversary in recognition of the efforts being made by that institution to advance Latin American integration through the provision of technical cooperation for research and training purposes.

A number of prominent people participated in the Regional Seminar, among them Augusto Ramírez Ocampo, former Colombian Foreign Minister; Horst Grebe, former Minister for Economic Development of Bolivia; Francesco Vincenti, an Italian consultant; Cristian Espinosa, former Ecuadorian Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade; Reginaldo Braga Arcuri, Director of the MERCOSUR Technical Secretariat; Adrián Bonilla, FLACSO Director; and Simón Molina Duarte, former Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States.