By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Apr 25 1997 (IPS)

The Andean Community agreed at this week’s summit on a last-ditch attempt to get Peru to reconsider its withdrawal from the bloc.

At the urging of Bolivia and Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela accepted a final 60-day extension for Peru to reevaluate its decision – even though they were convinced it would fail, Venezuelan officials said here.

Explaining the decision taken at the Apr. 22-23 Andean summit in Sucre, Bolivia to leave Peru’s departure open-ended, Minister of Foreign Relations Miguel Angel Burelli and Minister of Industry and Commerce Freddy Rojas said the hand held out to Peru demonstrated the group’s interest in convincing Lima to rethink a step that would be negative for its economy.

Peru, a founding member of the integration process 28 years ago, had distanced itself from the commercial commitments of the group in August 1992, refusing to accept its four-level tariff scheme on imports from outside the region. Repeated attempts by the bloc to resolve the discrepancies were unsuccessful, and the government of Alberto Fujimori announced its withdrawal on Apr. 11.

Peru never became a part of the Andean free trade zone, fully functioning among the other four members since 1993, or the customs union, operating since 1995.

Participating in the ninth Andean Presidential Council this week in Sucre were the presidents of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, and Panama’s Ernesto Perez Balladares as an observer.

After the closing of the summit, Rojas said in Sucre that “we have emerged renovated and strengthened” as a bloc, and “the Andean Community will now begin to demonstrate greater flexibility, dynamism, vigour, coherence and cohesion.”

Participants in the summit said Colombia and Venezuela, which account for more than half of the trade within the group, reached Sucre determined to settle and close the crisis, and leave the door open for Lima.

But Bolivia and Ecuador, for different reasons, wanted to make a last effort at negotiating with Peru.

Bolivia is left geographically isolated from the rest of the members with Peru’s withdrawal, which makes communications, transport and trade with the bloc much more complex. Moreover, Peru is its main Andean trading partner.

For Ecuador, which has kept a measured low profile on the question, the withdrawal of its neighbour would leave it without what has been termed the “Andean shield” preventing the border dispute between the two countries from once more flaring into armed conflict, as it did in January and February 1995.

Since that brief undeclared war over an unmarked section of border, when tempers were calmed largely due to the pressure of economic agents that benefited from Andean integration, Ecuador and Peru have been negotiating a peaceful solution to the dispute.

The four Andean members failed to reach agreement on whether or not Peru would be allowed to remain in the bloc’s financial institutions. While Colombia and Venezuela want to force Lima out, such a move would be difficult without a firm stance among all the partners.

The summit decided to move the headquarters of the executive arm of the bloc – the new General Secretariat – from Lima to Bogota within the next two months, and named Sebastian Alegrett, a Venezuelan economist who headed the Latin American Economic System from 1983 to 1987, as secretary-general.

The four countries also decided on the liberalisation and expansion of trade in services, to be operative before the deadline set by the World Trade Organisation.

They agreed to negotiate, by June 1998, a free trade zone with Panama, to serve as a bridge between South and Central America. The government of Perez Balladares is also an observer to the Central American integration scheme. Panama, meanwhile, formalised its entry into the financial arm of the bloc, the Andean Foment Corporation (CAF).

But the greatest effort will be applied to the creation of a free trade area with the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur). The negotiations are to conclude in October, and the elimination of tariffs between the two blocs should get underway next year.

Paraguayan President Juan Carlos Wasmosy attended the summit as a special guest, as rotating president of Mercosur, also comprised of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

The four members of the Andean Community agreed to act as a bloc in the negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), following the lead of the Mercosur and Caribbean Community. The partners proposed that the negotiations for the FTAA be launched at the summit of the Americas scheduled for March 1998 in Chile.

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