Andean Community (CAN) agrees to negotiate with Brazil and renew Argentinian and Uruguayan preferences

Lima, Mar 30 99. CAN Secretary General Sebastían Alegrett confirmed today that the Andean Community has agreed to negotiate the bases for a Free Trade Agreement with Brazil and, at the same time, to renew the tariff preferences granted bilaterally to Argentina and Uruguay within the framework of ALADI.

In a radio interview, he stated that CAN Commission Chairman Marta Lucía Ramírez de Rincón had informed Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia yesterday about the Andean acceptance of the Brazilian invitation, after each of the Andean countries had been consulted.

Adding that "we hold firmly to our decision to build a South American space with Mercosur," Alegrett went on to explain that what has changed is the course to be taken to reach that goal.

Apparently, following the last meeting held in Lima, Argentina and Uruguay had proposed, to everyone's surprise, that the existing tariff preferences be extended to the end of this year. Brazil, for its part, had broached the possibility of negotiating the bases for a Free Trade Agreement with the Andean Community within a period of three months.

To the Andean Community Secretary General, "what is important is the agreement on objectives." He was of the opinion that both proposals are very interesting and that they do not conflict, nor do they reveal any sign of splits within Mercosur.

"Brazil's proposal opens up new possibilities and lends fresh momentum to the negotiations, that will make it possible to move ahead more rapidly toward a free trade agreement between the two blocs," he stated forcefully, while stressing that it also reveals a more realistic attitude on the part of the economies involved.

He went on to add that the proposal put forward by Argentina and Uruguay also opens up a broader space for continuing the negotiations that, in principle, had had an agreed March 31 deadline and had covered all of the products included within the historical assets.

Asked about the impact of the international situation on the efforts of the two blocs to come to an agreement, he stated that is not possible to divorce these efforts from external developments and the economic crisis, or from political crises, either --he added, referring to those of Ecuador and Paraguay--, which are fortunately being surmounted in the two communities. "We are witnesses in Paraguay to the revitalizing of democracy," he added. According to Alegrett, "all of this helps the two blocs to grow stronger."