Uruguay’s Lacalle Pou travels to Argentina this Friday to clear the air with Fernández

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, will travel this Friday (13) to Argentina to meet with his counterpart, Alberto Fernández, according to what was published on Thursday by the newspaper La República and confirmed to Efe by sources from the Presidency and the Foreign Ministry.

The president will be accompanied by his foreign minister, Francisco Bustillo, who, according to the sources, was the promoter of the meeting during a talk in Lima with his Argentine counterpart, Felipe Solá, on the occasion of the inauguration of Pedro Castillo as president of Peru, which they both attended.

The meeting, of which there was no news until Thursday, will be used for a relaxed chat on matters of the bilateral agenda, considering the different positions that both presidents hold on the direction that the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) should take.

During the last summit of the regional bloc, in which Argentina transferred the six-month rotating presidency to Brazil, Uruguay announced that it would seek “extra-zone trade agreements”, following the path of flexibilization advocated by the governments of Lacalle Pou and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

For its part, Argentina maintains a more protectionist stance and strengthens the bloc as a whole.

According to sources consulted, the meeting environment will be similar to the one held in November 2020 at the presidential residence of Anchorena, Uruguay, when the Uruguayan president offered a barbecue to host Fernández.

Lacalle Pou’s trip to Argentina, which will be a same day round trip, will be the second travel abroad of the president since he took office on March 1, 2020, after winning the elections in November 2019.

In February 2021, he traveled to Brazil to meet president Bolsonaro. In May, he had to suspend his trip to Ecuador for the inauguration of the then-president-elect, Guillermo Lasso, due to the sudden death of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Larrañaga.

For his part, Bustillo, who was ambassador to Spain until July 2020, when he was appointed foreign minister to replace Ernesto Talvi, who resigned, maintains a hectic international agenda. Upon his return from Argentina he will go to Europe to continue contacts that favor the trade of Uruguayan products.