Address by the Foreign Minister of Colombia, Guillermo Fernández de Soto, on his election as the new Secretary General of the Andean Community and the transfer of the Pro Tempore Secretariat to Colombia

Lima, July 7, 2002

I would like to thank you for having placed your confidence in me by electing me Secretary General of the Andean Community. Rest assured that I will do my utmost to achieve our common aim of deepening subregional integration and making the CAN a key player on the hemispheric scene.

There are many of you who will ask yourselves why I am accepting this mission at a moment when the region is so troubled, when our countries are experiencing problems arising from their sweeping economic and political transformations and are facing risks created by the new protectionist movements in the world?

I assume this difficult mission as a professional challenge, but, above all, with the conviction that our countries need to further develop the option of integration and to consolidate it as a bloc that is able to respond actively to the demands posed by the new global scenario.

We cannot allow ourselves to be either passive or apathetic. The world will not wait for us. There is no time for lengthy deliberation or doubt, given the demands that have arisen in all fields and the realities posed by the new century. Integration is our way and our united front must be our guiding strategy.

The time is ripe for determining our course of action. This historic moment in the hemisphere calls for our undivided attention and commitment to the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and our relations with the United States, Canada, the European Union and the Asian Pacific.

These are not merely options that we can choose to accept or reject, but a true imperative for the future in a growing process of globalization. Our countries face the dilemma of either watching world developments passively and accepting the policies that others design for us, or of choosing to be the forgers of the initiatives that will boost the common social, economic and foreign policy development of our region so that we may play a part in shaping a more just international order.

We have moved ahead on many fronts in recent years. We have been able to establish a broad agenda based on a multidimensional approach to Andean integration that is not limited to economic issues alone, but takes in social matters, foreign policy, integration and border development, together with the strengthening of Andean institutions.

We have adopted the “Andean Cooperation Plan for the Control of Illegal Drugs and Related Offenses,” a Community instrument for attacking each of the links in the drug trafficking chain on the basis of the principles of integrality, cooperation and shared responsibility.

We have also signed the “Andean Charter for Peace and Security,” which lays down the principles and commitments for formulating a Community security policy in the region, establishing a peace zone, taking regional action against terrorism, limiting external defense spending, controlling conventional arms and transparency.

Even so, many aspects of our institutional order still need refining. What we have accomplished thus far is merely the first step in the immense undertaking that awaits us. This mission must necessarily be imbued with a respect for democratic values, which has become the guiding force in our actions, as set forth in the Protocol, “Andean Community Commitment to Democracy.”

There are major challenges that require our undivided attention. At the hemispheric level, for example, in the face of the challenge of achieving the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2005, it is essential that we consolidate the enthralling political project of working together to address a common agenda.

Therefore, we must level with each other about the immediate future we desire for our countries and for our integration movement.

If the political will exists -and I am certain that it does among our Governments-we can achieve this fundamental aim in time.

A Common External Tariff without loopholes or exclusions must cease to be our continuing, yet unfulfilled, objective. Our pressing task is to make this a reality for all of our countries before it becomes buried in the avalanche of hemispheric negotiations.

We should continue to strengthen the CAN’s relations with the United States in order to both increase trade and investment and seek new opportunities for products native to the region, without, of course, neglecting the topics on our political agenda.

It is necessary to successfully achieve a strategic association between the Andean Community and the European Union that will enable us to deepen our political dialogue and will lead to the signing of a free trade agreement in which the starting point is the safeguarding of the historical heritage that we have already accumulated through the GSP.

We must take a series of steps, established in practice by the European Union, in order to attain that agreement. The Andean nations cannot allow themselves to be left behind in the region’s advance.

For that reason, we must endow the CAN with a synergy of its own that will reduce its vulnerability to external elements, while strengthening its international image. To that end, we must adopt policies that are truly Community-centered, centralize the topics on our agenda, concentrate our efforts and commit ourselves even more fully to integration.

One of the major challenges facing the subregion is to move ahead with the execution of the physical infrastructure projects so aptly identified by the Andean Development Corporation (CAF). These will make it possible to reinforce the competitiveness of the region as a whole and to promote its economic and social development. With that aim in mind, I invite you to readdress this valuable initiative.

As our common liberator, Simón Bolívar, so aptly put it in his Letter from Jamaica: “Our union will not come about by divine means, but through substantial effects and well-directed efforts.”

It is here, in the coordination of these efforts, that the General Secretariat has a key role to play. The efforts of the Technical Secretariat, from its very creation by the Trujillo Protocol, have been essential to the integration process.

It is urgently important to continue building up the General Secretariat in order to reinforce its political role and its capacity for action in those areas which the new priorities that we set ourselves jointly with our countries will pinpoint.

I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to acknowledge the work done by Sebastián Alegrett, who, with an integration-oriented vision and conviction, directed this organization so effectively. He has dedicated to the CAN the best years of his professional life, in which he also served as a brilliant career Ambassador of our Venezuelan sister republic. He has left an unmistakable mark in all of the countries where he represented his nation, particularly Colombia, where he is remembered with special affection, as is his wife Cristina, who showed herself able to harmoniously complement those important diplomatic efforts.

Dear friends:

By a happy coincidence, our country today also receives from Bolivia, personally from its Foreign Minister and my friend, Gustavo Fernández Saavedra, the Pro Tempore Secretariat of the Andean Community, which it has headed with great success.

I am convinced that the vision that I have presented reflects the spirit that I share with all of you. For that reason, on behalf of Colombia, I call upon you to work jointly with me so that we may continue this effort.

We do not have to invent our integration. Nor is it built on shaky foundations. Precisely the contrary. It already rests on solid foundations and there are many reasons to shore these up and further deepen them. In effect, we have behind us a legacy of integration built up patiently over the 33-year history of the process. No language or cultural barriers stand between our nations, as in the case in other integration blocs. As if this were not enough, turning to our history, we were all freed by the same man, the greatest integrationist the world has ever known, who told us “the future government of the nations is integration.”

With all of these elements in favor of our integration, I would like, on receiving this appointment as Secretary General of the Andean Community, to make a clear and resounding call that comes from my Andean heart: The CAN is the best choice! Let us keep wagering on it, let us believe in it with a steadfast and unquestioning commitment.

As English historian Eric Hobsbawn so aptly put it: “One thing is clear. If mankind is to have a future, it will not be by prolonging the past or the present.” I believe in the future of our Andean region, in our capacity for transformation, and for that reason have assumed the challenge of becoming an active part of the changes that await us.

Thank you very much.