/REPEAT/ INTEGRATION: Peru Opens Year of Definitions for Andean Community

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Jan 14 1997 (IPS) - The battered image of the Andean Community, both within the bloc and beyond, means 1997 will be a year of definitions for the five members, starting with Peru – the most prickly of the group’s nations.

The trade ministers of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela will meet Thursday and Friday in Lima to study President Alberto Fujimori’s proposal for a common tariff policy with the other partners.

But the Andean diplomats and Venezuelan government officials consulted in Caracas agreed “proposals are not enough now,” and that concrete steps are needed from the elusive Lima administration.

The general feeling in the Andean capitals is that the inertia of Peru remaining outside the trade agreements is more damaging to the block than would be the somewhat improbable withdrawal of Lima.

The trade ministers’ meeting will be followed by a session of the Broadened Council of foreign and trade ministers on Jan. 27, when the case of Peru will be tagged on to discussion of the delayed institutional changes.

The third pending issue: negotiation with the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) to establish a South American Free Trade Area (SAFTA) is a point which Andean technicians and diplomats feel is already underway – with plans for talks to run from February to September.

Furthermore, this objective needs to be reached for the group to achieve greater cohesion and overcome the problems which have lead members and non-members alike to talk of the disbanding of the group and even “annexation” by the Mercosur, even though the Andean integration dynamic is still going ahead.

“The key factor is the political will,” said the Venezuelan Rodrigo Arcaya, member of the Cartagena Agreement Council (Junac), the Lima-based technical organ of the group, which will shortly be replaced by a General Secretariat.

Arcaya, the only person consulted who did not ask for his name to be kept secret, agreed with other sources, that Colombia and Venezuela are forcing Peru to decide on either commitment to or marginalisation from the group.

These two countries have the dominant economies within the bloc, carrying out nearly 70 percent of the already liberalised trade, and were those who provoked the revival of the group in 1989 – it was actually created in 1969 – with a new emphasis on trade liberalisation.

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