Raul Castro headed to Chile

Progreso Semanal/RPA

HAVANA – President Raul Castro heads the Cuban delegation to the EU-CELAC. It will be the first meeting of this kind held among heads of state or their envoys from this regional integration organization. The announcement was made during the 1 p.m. newscast. Vice President of the Council of Ministers Miguel Diaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla were accompanying Castro.

Preceding the two meetings are others of an academic nature with a parliamentary or business slant among others. Also being organized is the re-launch of negotiations between Mercosur and the EU, a meeting that is favored by the Brazilian head of state Dilma Rousseff, who has the highest number of representatives on the Commission and the European Council, José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy.

That meeting, already pretty well advanced, will occur parallel to that of the Foreign Ministers of CELAC and the EU, which starts this Saturday, January 26 in Santiago de Chile.

Since 2004 the process has been stuck between the two blocks, due to differences between the parties. The South Americans (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela) are demanding greater access to EU agricultural market and the Old World representatives expect there to be more opening from their counterparts to European industrial products.

The CELAC Summit begins Sunday and will run until Monday, the day when the organizing groups are expected to hand over the temporary presidency to Cuba, who will preside it for a bit more than a year.