Weekly Report - 23 December 2003

Quotes of the week...

Postscript 24 April 2007 Modified: 23 December 2003 322 views

"What a delay is depends on what people's expectations were and when they had those expectations. So the reality is that they have not been concluded, but those people who thought that the negotiations for the review would have been concluded earlier, they may view that as a delay. But it is not a delay in the sense that we are not continuing to talk, because we are indeed continuing to talk."

Thomas Dawson, chief IMF spokesman, trying to explain what is happening with a performance review the Argentines consider delayed.

"I wish these issues would remain bilateral, because all Latin American countries have had their history of border problems, and dealing with them multilaterally has never proved convenient."

José Miguel Insulza, Chilean interior minister, on Bolivia's claim for an access to the sea.

"Evidently this is a bilateral problem, but it also has regional repercussions in South America, and for that reason it is a problem that interests all of us."

Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister, trying to define his country's stance on the Chile-Bolivia dispute.

LATIN AMERICAN REGIONAL REPORTS:
BRAZIL & SOUTHERN CONE - NOW AVAILABLE

In this report we focus on the telecommunications sector in Brazil as a scrap develops over who will buy Embratel. We consider the forthcoming cabinet reshuffle in Brazil now that President Lula has driven his two key constitutional reforms, tax and pensions, through the legislature, and provide our customary round-up of economic developments over the course of the last month. Also, a special feature on Lula's muddled environment policy.

In the Southern Cone, Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner faces down a massive rally by the piquetero movement, the IMF reprises the role of villain and tension mounts between Argentina and Uruguay. Elsewhere, the WTO issues a word of warning for Chile as it stacks up free-trade agreements and Paraguay's supreme court gets a long-awaited face-lift.

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