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Argentina, Brazil agree to strengthen integration

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-08-05 16:03

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina and Brazil agreed here on Monday to strengthen strategic integration in economic development between the two countries in face of globalization.

At a ceremony to inaugurate an entrepreneur forum, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez and her Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed that both countries will benefit from regional and bilateral integration.

An estimated 1,000 businessmen -- 700 from Argentina and 300 from Brazil -- attended the inaugural ceremony.

Da Silva urged the entrepreneurs not to see their neighbors as rivals but as cooperation partners, and that national interests do not stop strategic agreement between the two countries.

Da Silva urged efforts to strengthen the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises to turn them into "true engines of integration" between the two countries, and to promote public policy coordination. He  suggested that businessmen from both countries who "have a crucial role" in the integration process meet regularly to debate economic policies.

Speaking on the same occasion, Fernandez said Brazil is "the most important country of the region" in terms of industrial development. Argentina and Brazil are united "not only by affection", but also by "a common vision about the need of strategic relations."

The two countries had a friction at the World Trade Organization's Doha Round last week. Argentina opposed Brazil's position of trade globalization, which it said was supportive of objectives of industrialized nations.