VENEZUELA, MERCOSUR, UNASUR TOP OF THE AGENDA FOR PARAGUAY’S CONGRESS

Asunción, March 4- The Paraguayan government announced Thursday it will insist with the Congressional approval of Venezuela’s incorporation to Mercosur, which remains stalled at the country’s Legislative branch.

“The strategy to help Venezuela become a full member of Mercosur is to work with the production sectors of the country and convince them of the significance and benefits for agriculture and livestock of such incorporation” said Executive cabinet chief Miguel Lopez Perito following on this week’s end of Congress’ summer recess.

Lopez Perito said that with Venezuela inside the group, Paraguay will be able to increase food exports to the Caribbean country, “which has a serious food production deficit of which other Mercosur members are already taking advantage”, plus the fact it will help to reduce the pending oil bill with PDVSA (Venezuela’s government oil corporation) and the main supplier of fuels to Paraguay.

The cabinet chief also asked members of Congress and other groups to leave aside criticisms of President Hugo Chavez and concentrate on Venezuela the country, “it is Venezuela that is requesting to become a full member of Mercosur, and Chavez is the elected president”.

The other Mercosur full members, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil have already approved Venezuela’s incorporation, but the Paraguayan Congress did not consider the issue condemning what it describes as the “non democratic practices and methods “ of the Chavez regime plus the fact that “the opposition and the press are constantly exposed to attacks and bullying”.

Last December the Lugo administration withdrew the initiative after a carefully knit political agreement with several opposition groups, in exchange for posts in the Judiciary and control institutes and naming ambassadors fell through.

Some aspects of the package such as a hefty financial reward for the dissident supporters of the initiative leaked in the Argentine press torpedoed the vote that was to be taken in December just before recess.

However since some of the promised posts have effectively been delivered and the exposed groups anticipated they would only support the initiative if there’s a considerable rebate in the pending oil bill with Venezuela (several hundred million US dollars), negotiations could again be on track.

Precisely on Wednesday President Fernando Lugo met with coalition Senators to consider the legislative agenda for this year and Venezuela, Mercosur and Unasur were top of the list.

“The priorities for this first half are an understanding on Venezuela and Mercosur, approval of the Unasur foundation protocol, naming ambassadors and filling posts in the administration and government companies which remain vacant”, said Senator Sixto Pereira.

“These are issues pending from the last legislature and must be addressed in the coming weeks” added the lawaker.

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