Lima, Peru – Peruvian President-elect Alan Garcia said here Friday that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez should bring his country back into the Andean Community and join the bloc’s efforts to forge a trade agreement with the European Union.
In a session with foreign reporters, Garcia said that Chavez’s fears about the free-trade accords Colombia and Peru signed with the United States “will be dissipated” if Caracas takes part in the Andeans’ negotiations with the EU.
Chavez cited the bilateral pacts with Washington in April when he announced that Venezuela was pulling out of the Andean Community just as the bloc was preparing for discussions with the EU.
The leader of Peru’s center-left APRA party said Venezuela might be concerned that trade agreements with the United States will enable Washington “to orchestrate economic and social relations” within the Andean group.
All the more reason, according to Garcia, for Venezuela to rejoin the Andean Community and negotiate a “good compensatory accord with the European Union.”
Of the community’s five original members, Colombia and Peru have signed free-trade deals with the United States; Ecuador sought an accord but the talks broke down; and both Venezuela and Bolivia reject out of hand the idea of such an agreement with the “empire.”
Lima and Bogota justified their pacts with Washington by pointing to the year-end expiration of U.S. legislation granting preferential tariffs to Andean nations in recognition of their contribution to the war on drugs.
The leaders of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – Chavez is also invited – are set to meet next week in Quito for the Andean Community’s annual summit.
In a related matter, Garcia said Friday that his heated exchange of insults with Chavez during the Peruvian election campaign “does not have to hurt the relationship between the countries.”
Peruvians went to the polls April 9 to choose a successor to President Alejandro Toledo, but none of the three main candidates won a majority, necessitating a runoff between former head of state Garcia and the top vote-getter, left-leaning nationalist Ollanta Humala.
Having openly embraced Humala’s candidacy at an early stage, Chavez spent the weeks before last Sunday’s runoff blasting Garcia, vowing to break diplomatic ties with Peru if the social democrat were elected. The acrimony led Caracas and Lima to withdraw their respective ambassadors.
Garcia, however, said Friday that as far as he is concerned, the dispute is over. “We’re not going to turn South America into a field of battle with Chavez,” the president-elect said.
“If Chavez declares war on me, I declare peace on him,” Garcia said, adding that only a united South America will be in a position to bargain on an equal footing with the wealthy 25-member EU.
