Lima, Dec. 3, 2004. Andean Community Secretary General Allan Wagner announced that the South American Community will take the two existing subregional institutions and build on them in a process that will be gradual, in order to take advantage of the progress that has already been made and the strengths that have been achieved.

" The South American Community will take shape from the progressive dovetailing of the CAN and Mercosur, with the addition of Chile, in what promises to be the largest and most ambitious development program of our history,” he stressed.

"The fact that 12 important countries have decided to build an integrated region is highly important politically and reflects the determination to move toward broader areas as a platform from which to reinforce our position and increase our international trade presence,” he went on to add.

This is a process that is starting and that will lead toward our progressive integration. What we are going to experience in the near future, then, is a resizing, at the South American level, of a series of institutions that will be dovetailed and, when appropriate, enlarged. "Let us not make the mistake of undertaking ´systematic refoundings´ that have often led us to reinvent everything time and again,” he stressed.

The Secretary General pointed out that the CAN’s contribution to the South American Community is the soundness of the experience it has accumulated and an institutional structure that is recognized as the most advanced of all the hemisphere’s integration processes. These are bodies and institutions, he added, that with a clear vision of the future had already moved into the South American sphere, such as the Andean Development Corporation, the Latin American Reserve Fund, the Andean Parliament, and the Hipólito Unanue Convention.

Wagner made this statement at the Second Meeting of Community bodies and institutions of the Andean Integration System (SAI), taking place in Lima prior to the Andean and South American Summits to be held next week in Cusco.

The meeting is being attended by the highest-level authorities of the SAI Community bodies and institutions responsible for the presentations on issues such as Development and Integration; Democracy, Governance and Citizenship; Participation in the Integration Process; Financing of the Andean Integration System; and Toward a South American Community, among others.

The authorities who are present include Enrique García, Executive President of the Andean Development Corporation (CAF); Víctor Enrique Urquidi, President of the Andean Parliament; Wallter Kaune, President of the Court of Justice; and Julio Velarde, Executive President of the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR).

Also attending are: Juan José Gorriti Valle, Chairman of the Andean Labor Advisory Council; Mauricio Bustamante, Executive Secretary of the Andean Health Body - Hipólito Unanue Convention; Enrique Ayala, Rector of the Simón Bolívar Andean University -Ecuador; and Omar José Muñoz, Deputy Secretary of the Andrés Bello Convention.