CARACAS – Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper is to be sworn in this week as secretary-general of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced.
Samper will take over the post from Ali Rodriguez of Venezuela, Maduro said on Monday.
“On Thursday, we will have an international event that is the official swearing in of former president Ernesto Samper as secretary general of the UNASUR here in Caracas,” Maduro said.
Samper, who governed Colombia between 1994 and 1998, was appointed to the UNASUR job last month by the presidents and heads of state of the 12 countries comprising the organization.
Speaking at the organization’s headquarters in Quito last week, the former Colombian leader said that his agenda as the new secretary-general would include social, economic and political issues.
He declared that he intended to create UNASUR advisory boards, the first of which would be made up of economists and presided over by former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo.
Regarding his political agenda, Samper has said that he would try to strengthen UNASUR’s political role and said he hoped to create a regional criminal court to try transnational crimes.
He has also stated that he hoped to speak with Maduro about reviving the political dialogue between the government and opposition, a process backed facilitated by Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.
The reconciliation effort “is not broken, only frozen,” Samper said last Thursday.
UNASUR’s members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Fonte: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2351346&CategoryId=10717
