Andean Ministers of Foreign Affairs Agree Upon Basic Foreign Policy Guideline and Provide Political Support for MERCOSUR Negotiations.

Lima, March 1st, 1999. The Secretary General of the Andean Community (CAN), Sebastian Alegrett, declared today that the results of the meeting of Foreign Ministers held in Colombia in which an agreement was reached concerning a Common Basic Foreign Policy Guideline as well as political support for MERCOSUR negotiations to establish a Free Trade Zone by the year 2000, were "extremely important".

Five Ministers of Foreign Affairs, members of the Andean Council of Foreign Affairs, met at Santa Fe, Colombia, on Friday, February 26 to study the guidelines for a common foreign policy as well as the agenda for the next Meeting of Presidents to be held on May 26 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Andean Integration Process.

Alegrett informed that the future Common Foreign Policy Guideline, as well as other measures to strengthen the common market and the agenda for social activities shall be signed at the forthcoming Andean Summit Meeting at Cartagena de Indias in May.

The guidelines shall identify the principles, objectives and criteria to guide the Common Foreign Policy as well as the mechanisms that shall be used to formulate and design said policy in addition to the most convenient modalities of action for its implementation.

At a meeting held in Montevideo on February 24 to 26 to continue negotiations concerning a Preferential Tariff Agreement between the Andean Community and MERCOSUR, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela reached a joint agreement on a Declaration concerning negotiations between the Andean Community and MERCOSUR.

In view of the fact that the overall strengthening of relations between CAN and MERCOSUR is considered to be "a priority objective" the Andean Ministers of Foreign Affairs urged both parties to "display balanced efforts to ensure the success of the ongoing negotiations".

They also declared their willingness "to establish mechanisms to reach joint political agreements on a more permanent basis" with MERCOSUR in order to "strengthen the links between both groups of countries".

The declaration of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs was communicated by the CAN Secretary General to the Commission, the other high level decision making Andean body made up by the Ministers of Trade and Integration, and to the President of the MERCOSUR Common Market Group.

Encouraged by Peru, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs also approved a declaration to strengthen Andean cooperation to solve the Y2K problem by the year 2000 aimed towards "sharing efforts, knowledge, expertise and technologies."

The declaration contains a warning about the Y2K problem for the year 2000 "which will affect millions of computer software programmes, making their data basis, applications and hardware crash or jam" which will lead to "possible extremely serious" results which will affect the normal performance of public administration and private enterprise.

In order to resolve the situation, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs agreed to "strengthen and expand co-operation" amongst the Andean countries and to set up a Working Group during the first Y2K Forum for South America held on March 4th in Lima.