Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2007 (ISSN 1471-4431

President Néstor Kirchner's attempt to postpone the dispute over the pulp mill with Uruguay (see page 3) until after the 28 October elections has prompted an insight into the respective views on foreign policy from the presidential candidates. 

Candidate for the Coalición Cí­vica, Elisa Carrió (who most polls place second) said on 19 September that her first move as president would be to improve ties with Uruguay. Her other priorities include ensuring that contracts signed with Chile over gas supply are honoured and helping Bolivia overcome its divisions. 

While pledging his commitment to improving relations with Uruguay, presidential candidate for Una Nación Avanzada (UNA), Roberto Lavagna, took the opportunity, in an interview with Brazilian newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, on 17 September, to accuse the Kirchner administration of "limiting" Argentina's foreign relations to only Venezuela and Spain (through oil company, Repsol-YPF). He described Kirchner's friendship with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez as one of the government's "biggest mistakes". He added that while espousing a pro-Latin America discourse, Chávez was "dividing the continent_with Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay on the one side and Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina on the other" and assured that if he won the elections, he would prioritize relations with neighbours in the Mercosur camp such as Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Lavagna also said that there was an "enormous contradiction" between the accusations against Iran regarding the AMIA bombing and the close relations maintained with Venezuela, given its ties with Iran.

Cristina Fernández, meanwhile, continued to boost her international profile with a trip to Germany. As well as meeting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, she also met the German economy minister, Michael Glos, with whom she discussed the Paris Club debt and reiterated the government's intentions to negotiate the debt without the intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Cristina's peripatetic world tour will continue with trips to the US, Chile and Brazil before the elections -evidence of the active foreign policy she is likely to pursue. While upholding close ties with Chávez , who said on 20 September that the "Rí­o de la Plata is singing her victory", she is also expected to maintain good relations with the US. The US establishment is said to look favourably on her likely presidency and this week she is accompanying her husband on a trip there. Moreover, on 28 September, she will be received by head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy Geithner, along with the presidents of American Express, Goldman Sach, JP Morgan-Chase, Citicorp and multi-nationals such as Unilever and Exxon. 

Such meetings, in which Cristina is not received as a candidate but a future president, suggest that the US financial establishment takes it for granted that she will win. The meeting with Geithner is also said to be an opportunity for the US financiers to express concerns over the Argentine economy, with problems most recently evinced in questions over inflation. The head of the Central Bank, Martí­n Redrado said on 13 September that he was "profoundly concerned" over inflation. The revival of questions over the state statistics institute Indec, which has previously come under fire for manipulating the inflation figures, resulted in the resignation of the official in charge of producing monthly price data, Beatriz Paglieri, on 22 September. 

Malvinas
The Argentine government has reacted angrily to plans by Britain to submit a bid to the UN proving that thousands of extra square miles of the ocean floor surrounding the Falklands are geographically part of the islands. The claim is based on international legislation stating that a nation's legitimately-held territory can extend up to 350 miles from its coast if it can verify that it is part of the shoreline's underlying continental shelf.