Buenos Aires, Argentina – The defense chiefs of Argentina and Chile met here Tuesday to sign a pact creating a permanent joint brigade for deployment on U.N. peacekeeping missions, the first such unit of its kind in Latin America.
Officials said the new force’s first assignment will be in Haiti, where troops from both countries are already operating as part of the U.N. Stabilization Mission.
The accord signed by Argentine Defense Minister Nilda Garre and Chilean counterpart Jaime Ravinet establishes a bilateral political mechanism to manage the force and mandates the creation next year of a combined general staff for the brigade.
“It is a very clear demonstration of the levels of cooperation our countries have attained. This process of integration is seen throughout the subregion,” Garre said of the agreement.
Ravinet likewise hailed the initiative as a reflection of the growing warmth of the ties between Santiago and Buenos Aires, whose troops have already served alongside each other on U.N. missions, notably in Cyprus, where Chilean soldiers were seconded to an Argentine unit.
The idea for the joint brigade emerged from an August 2004 meeting between the countries’ then-defense ministers, Michelle Bachelet – who faces a Jan. 15 runoff to become Chile’s first woman president – and Jose Pampuro of Argentina.
Pampuro, now a senator, told EFE that a series of joint exercises in recent years have allowed the Argentine and Chilean militaries to surmount decades of mutual suspicion and forge a good working relationship.
The two countries, both governed at the time by military juntas, almost went to war in 1978 over possession of three islands in the Beagle Channel, at the southern tip of South America. That dispute was settled in 1984 in a treaty facilitated by the late Pope John Paul II.
