Brazilian President to Attend MERCOSUR Summit

Brasilia, Dec 17. -President Dilma Rousseff will attend the 42nd Summit of the South Common Market (Mercosur) which will be held on December 20 in Montevideo, Uruguay, an official source said here Friday.The event will be preceded on December 19 by the 42nd Ordinary Meeting of the Mercosur Council, said a note by the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry published on the Internet.

During the summit a Free Trade Agreement will be signed among the regional block and Palestine, which will be represented in the event by the Palestinian Secretary of Foreign Business, Riadi Malki.

Also the Foreign Ministers of the member countries and the associates are expected to sign the Protocol of Montevideo on the Commitment to Democracy that will update the Protocol of Ushuaia, signed in 1998, that will now contain additional mechanisms of mediation and sanction in case of breach or attempt to breach democratic order in the signatory states.

The member countries, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, will declare the year 2012 as Year of the Eradication of Abject Poverty and Hunger in Mercosur.

In the closing of the summit, Uruguay will hand over the pro tempore presidency of the regional bloc to Argentina.

According to figures of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, members countries of Mercosur kept their upward trade expansion in 2011 and are expected to surpassed the value reached in 2010, 44.55 billion USD. (Prensa Latina)