In light of the responsibilities that Peru has assumed with the Chairmanship and Pro Tempore Secretariat of the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers and with a view to implementing an agenda of priorities designed so that the CAN is able to act jointly on the international stage, we find it especially important to be able to participate in this exercise in reflection on the Common Foreign Policies of the Andean Community and the European Union.

In this exercise, Europe's experience will undoubtedly be most valuable, especially if we consider that the Andean countries, unlike the European, have committed themselves legally to the bases of a common foreign policy and politically to the progressive implementation of that policy, but without the assistance of any common market in operation. Nor can it draw on the lessons to be learned from the exercise of a political cooperation strengthened over the long term.

As you are aware, the Andean Group had to face the most serious crisis of its existence during the eighties because of widespread failure to comply with Community commitments. This was not unrelated to the external debt crisis and, internally, to public policies that failed to take account of, when they did not act in open opposition to, the nature of the market and the trends that prevailed in it.

Viewed from another angle, we can even venture to offer the hypothesis that the Andean crisis was essentially political in nature and that the Andean Pact was up against a lack of leadership, weak political cooperation and a heavy shortage of strategic guidance. This led the Andean Presidents to take on the major challenge of relaunching the Andean project and giving it a new impetus, and to assume the political direction of the process by creating the Andean Presidential Council in May 1990.

Three key moments stand out in the relaunching of Andean integration that correspond to major decisions that were taken to strengthen and consolidate the movement: First came the Strategic Design for Orienting the Andean Group, which was adopted at the Presidential Summit in Galapagos ten years ago. This consisted of a reengineered and modern approach to Andean integration that was attuned to the new forces already emerging at that time and which are today a part of everyday life. I am referring to the major role being taken by the private sector, the economic opening and the globalization of economies and businesses.

This strategic design, which includes an Action Plan, put forward two major objectives for that action. First, to consolidate the Andean economic space, coming to a stop basically at the creation of the Customs Union, which in the final analysis is the explicit maximum objective of the Cartagena Agreement; and second, to improve the Andean Group's external relations, both as regards its economic insertion and its external actions.

The Declaration on "The Andean Commitment to Peace, Security and Cooperation" was signed, which already provided, among other things, for the commitment to establish confidence-building measures, to coordinate policies in the war on terrorism and drug-trafficking, and to hold of meetings of high-level military leaders.

I consider these elements to be important seeds of what was to become the Andean common foreign policy with its stated objective of leading to "joint action toward third countries and in multilateral forums and negotiations." The need for its growing spread was already recognized at that time, thus underscoring the need to build up political cooperation beyond the confines of the Andean boundaries and to adopt the principle of gradual formation of that policy.

Equally as important is the recognition that an improvement in joint negotiating power vis-a-vis third parties goes hand-in-hand with the strengthening of the subregion's economic space. This could not be otherwise, for to be believable and lasting in time, joint external action must rest on a specific reality and what better example of this than effective economic integration.

This does not mean, of course, that before the Galapagos Summit the Andean Pact had no mechanisms in place or actions adopted with regard to the external sphere. Precisely the contrary. By 1979, the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers had already been created for the purpose of "institutionalizing the joint external projection" and played a key role in seeking solutions to regional conflicts.

Even so, the action of the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers was sporadic because of its nature as a body for political consultation and cooperation, more than as a supranational Community body whose decisions are legally binding, as it is today.

Six years after the Strategic Plan was adopted in Galapagos, the 1996 Trujillo Presidential Summit approved the reengineering of the Andean Pact, the second key political landmark of this decade. In effect, on that occasion the Protocol Amending the Cartagena Agreement was approved, creating the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) to replace the Andean Group as both a supranational body and an integration process.

This new design is geared toward covering the deficit in political leadership and strategic guidance noted earlier. The new Protocol effectively legally incorporates into the institutional structure of the Andean Community both the Andean Presidential Council, responsible for defining the Andean subregional integration policy, as the highest-level organ of the CAN, and the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers, whose decisions are legally binding, as the legislative body.

As a result, with the entry into effect of the Trujillo Protocol a little over two years ago, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Andean Community assumed the political direction and coordination of the process, accumulating in their hands several functions that call for new methods of institutional coordination to be adopted within the Andean Community, together with a greater degree of political cooperation and consultation among the members. These responsibilities include, among others, formulating the Community's foreign policy; formulating, executing and evaluating the general policy for Andean integration; coordinating the joint position of the member countries in international forums and negotiations; and signing conventions and agreements with third countries on global foreign policy and cooperation issues.

The Trujillo Protocol also created the Andean Integration System, defined as the system "..whose purpose is to allow for the effective coordination of its component bodies and institutions in order to intensify Andean subregional integration, promote its external projection and consolidate and strengthen actions connected with the integration process." It also establishes the order of precedence of the legal instruments governing the bodies and institutions of the Andean Integration System, to wit the Cartagena Agreement, its respective treaties, and its Amending Protocols.

These changes in organization and jurisdiction, as we have already pointed out, were made in an effort to give Andean integration appropriate institutional underpinnings so that the Member Countries are able to accelerate the process and lead it into spheres left formally outside the original project. These are, in addition to the political area, the cultural sphere and that of foreign relations.

Within this new approach, the legal foundations were laid and the necessary political bodies put into place for the exercise of a Community foreign policy in an effort to dovetail the joint foreign policy of the Member Countries in a more organic way than within the more restricted framework of political cooperation. This was given concrete form with the approval of Decision 458 adopting the "Guidelines for a Common Foreign Policy," which we will scrutinize during the course of this Seminar. All I would like to call your attention to at this point is that that policy establishes the criteria and the principles that should guide Andean foreign policy, together with its mechanisms and forms of action.

A third key moment in the history of the Andean Community corresponds, to my way of thinking, more to the existence of a political decisiveness and a will, than to an actual event. I am referring to the agreement reached by the Andean Presidents at the XI Andean Presidential Summit in Cartagena in May 1999 -that is, about five months ago- for establishing the Common Market by the year 2005, at the latest.

To that end, they instructed the Council of Foreign Ministers to prepare and present to the next Presidential Summit, scheduled to be held in Lima in February 2000, a new Draft Amendment to the Cartagena Agreement, legally binding the Andean countries to fulfill their commitments and the timetables for achieving the free circulation of goods, services, capital and persons within the subregion. It is my impression that the evolution of the Andean integration process as I have described it has resolved some of the basic elements for exercising a common foreign policy. In the first place, a proper institutional base has been laid for defining, executing and supervising a common foreign policy; in the second, the legal framework has been approved for demanding a larger measure of cooperation among the Member Countries; and third, external advances have been linked to the intensification of political cooperation and the construction of the common market.

Along this line of reasoning, the definition of a Common Foreign Policy (CFP) has become a basic pillar of this new stage of Andean integration. It is founded on the commitment to safeguard and improve upon the principles and agreements of the Andean process and, in the final analysis, is consistent with the conviction of the need to build Andean political and economic unity.

Now then, as we pointed out in the initial discussion of the CFP, it should rest upon several substantive understandings.

First, a progressive approach should be taken, allowing for the construction of the necessary elements of trust, credibility and knowledge with regard to the exercise of a new instrument that opens up major possibilities, but also has its risks.

Second, while the CFP should be comprehensive, its execution should begin with a group of "low intensity" issues and should not aspire to address matters that constitute major problems for the Member Countries.

Third, the CFP should harmonize closely with national policies and enfold a large measure of mutual trust and cannot yet aspire to incorporate supranational approaches.

Fourth, in the present stage, the CFP should help the Andean countries to increase the negotiating power of their participants and their presence on the international scene.

Fifth, the CFP should be carried out by consensus.

And sixth, political cooperation and the construction of a common market are essential preconditions for permitting the CFP to evolve into higher forms of action.

To sum up, we Andean countries have committed ourselves to embark upon an integration that involves charting new courses based on a diagnosis that points to the strengthening of regionalism as the most efficient course for coping with globalization and for staking out a positive place for ourselves in the new world political economy. We come to this undertaking equipped only with our "background experience" for moving from common forms of cooperation and political consultation toward a strengthened cooperation or toward a common foreign policy based on a "high intensity" agenda.

For that reason this Seminar is so important, for I sincerely hope that it will help us to identify precisely the elements and also the stumbling blocs the European Union has confronted in defining and applying a common foreign policy. With these words, I officially open this event.

Thank you very much.