Lima, August 28, 2006

It is a pleasure to be with all of you today. I would like to thank the General Secretariat of the Andean Community, as headed by its Acting Secretary, Alfredo Fuentes, for its kind invitation, so that I can address you for the first time as Colombia’s Foreign Minister.

Let this be an opportunity to get to know each other, to start a frank and open dialogue among friends, and to continue working to build up the CAN.

We first ourselves today at a stage of redirection of our integration process, in which it is essential to deepen political dialogue and to keep all of the bodies belonging to the Andean integration system closely coordinated.

For Colombia, the Andean Community is the most efficient tool for confronting the challenges raised by globalization. Convergence on different issues and cooperation with countries that have similar characteristics enable us to maximize those aspects in which we have strengths.

Colombia has adopted regional integration as one of its foreign policy priorities --a regional integration from a multidimensional approach that goes beyond the trade and economic issues to include political and social aspects. For Colombia, deepening the CAN is State policy.

Because of its strategic geographic location, Colombia is at the summit of the integration processes that are underway in the American Hemisphere: in the North, with the United States, Central America and the Caribbean; and in the South, through the gradual convergence of the Andean Community and MERCOSUR, with the possibility of consolidating a broader-reaching physical and trade integration project in the sphere of the South American Community of Nations.

The development of a South American area that is integrated politically, socially, economically, environmentally and infrastructurally, will strengthen South America’s own identity and help, from a subregional perspective, to give the region greater weight and representivity in international forums.

The importance of having a strong and politically stable Andean Community that serves as a unified spokesman in dealing with MERCOSUR to create the South American Community of Nations is obvious in this context.

It cannot be denied that despite the recent withdrawal of one of its members, the CAN is one of the region’s most valuable vehicles for political coordination, as well as a basic mechanism for our trade relations. Proof of this can be found in Chile’s acceptance of the invitation to join the Andean Community as an Associate Member.

Recognition of the Community’s important accomplishments, in turn, gives us confidence in the future of the project we decided to start constructing 37 years ago.

We have progressed in consolidating a Community political agenda of priority issues for the region. In the area of our common foreign policy, a major step was taken with the start-up of the Free Trade Agreement between the Andean Community and MERCOSUR.

Furthermore, the future of our relations with the European Community requires a highly strengthened Andean Community prepared to negotiate the CAN-EU Association Agreement encompassing political, trade and cooperation matters.

It is Colombia’s hope that in September the European Commission will ask the European Council for authorization to start negotiating the Association Agreement before the year is out.

At my meeting today with President Alan García and the Foreign Minister and the entire team from Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one of the key subjects of our bilateral talks was our pleasure and satisfaction at the answer sent by President Michelle Bachelet on August 24 and already received by the Presidents, in which we Foreign Ministers are instructed to move ahead rapidly with the process.  

As a result, we signed a note with the Foreign Minister of Peru after having consulted the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, inviting the Bolivian Foreign Minister to call a meeting, hopefully within the framework of the United Nations Assembly that will be held next month in New York, so that we can rapidly adjust all of the procedures for Chile’s acceptance.

Colombia considers it essential to establish more dynamic and deep relations between the CAN and Central America, given the challenges the future holds. To that end, we are furthering the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the Central American countries in an initial stage, with the hope that the other Andean countries will join us in that process in the future.

Furthermore, given the importance of infrastructure for strengthening the CAN’s integration process, Colombia, having been accepted as a full member of the Puebla-Panama Plan, will seek to expedite the active participation of the Andean countries in that Plan.

Colombia’s consolidation as a driving force for Hemispheric integration will depend upon the advances that are made in the area of trade negotiations and in building the physical infrastructure that will give form to and ensure the convergence and interconnection of the territories in the different areas of the American continent: north and south; Atlantic and Pacific; the Caribbean and the Amazon with Tierra del Fuego.

For that reason, it is necessary to bring to fruition the land and river interconnection projects that have been identified as a priority by the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) and to ensure that they are linked up with the electric, gas and transportation interconnection projects provided for in the Puebla — Panama Plan.

It is also necessary to reaffirm the political commitment of the Member Countries to our integration process day-by-day, by complying with Andean legislation and reaching the goals set by the Presidents in the various pillars that uphold the Community.

In this undertaking, the CAN General Secretariat is vitally important as the cohesive element that supports and gives continuity to the process by providing the necessary internal and external conditions for enabling the CAN to move ahead with the greatest degree of stability possible.

The Andean Community has a highly valuable heritage on which to draw, which calls upon us to safeguard the large store of capital that has been built up in recent years and to lay out courses for successfully executing this project that has so much to give us. Here, I would like to assure you that I will do all that is in my power to achieve our common aim of having a strong, mature CAN with an international projection.