Caracas has four years to gradually adapt its legislation to common external tariffs

The Mercosur free trade area between the Argentina, the Brazil, the Uruguay and the Paraguay has now a fifth player: the Venezuela officially became Tuesday, Member of this large market, at the end of an extraordinary Summit in Caracas, where the Presidents of the 4 countries formally signed the Protocol of accession with the head of Venezuelan State, Hugo Chavez, which gives his country full voting rights.

The latter and his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner, in addition, concluded a series of agreements strengthening axis Caracas-Buenos Aires. A project "strategic alliance" between the two countries should be implemented through a joint commission.

Eighth oil producer and fifth largest exporter, the Venezuela is a recruit of weight for Mercosur, which now represents 75 of the GDP of South America and a community of some 250 million people. Caracas has four years to gradually adapt its legislation to common external tariffs.

But this accession may also be an element of stabilization in the trading bloc, where the good agreement between partners is reign. The Uruguay and the Paraguay criticized, stridently so, in the argentine and Brazilian powers their lack of solidarity. However, Hugo Chavez, father of the Bolivarian revolution, great agitator in the region and opponent hard American neoliberalism in General and George Bush in particular does cache not willingness also to Mercosur a political instrument. Objective: to oppose the free trade area of the Americas project advocated by Washington.

The "principle of asymmetries".

In any case, Hugo Chavez made a gesture in the direction of the Paraguay and the Uruguay. The Protocol of accession provides for the opening in the Venezuela of the Argentine and Brazilian markets in 2010 and the Uruguayan and Paraguayan, markets more fragile, in 2013, the Venezuelan market to open up to here to 2012. But Caracas has promised to immediately exempt from customs duties a series of products of the Paraguay and Uruguay, to recognize "the principle of the asymmetries" in Mercosur.

Chavez was also invited at the Summit of Caracas his protégé, the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, whose country is an associate MERCOSUR member and recently, which sowed disorder and anxiety among its neighbours by nationalizing the fields of hydrocarbons from the Bolivia (which has the largest reserves of gas after the Venezuela). Inter alia, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras will suffer considerably from this decision.

In addition, Hugo Chavez recently engaged in another blow to shine in slamming the door of the Andean Community of nations (CAN), trade bloc which includes the Bolivia, Ecuador, the Colombia and the Peru. He alleged that indeed these two latter countries have concluded bilateral agreements with the United States. The Colombian economy Minister, Jorge Humberto Botero, however, pointed out Tuesday, the Treaty may not enter into force in January 2007 as expected (given persistent despite two years of negotiations on the chicken, beef and sugar) but hoped at least a signature in September.

In this Web of complex relationships, Lula, Brazilian President anxious to play a leading role in the area, his country will have to redouble our diplomacy to not let his bulky Venezuelan colleague handle all land.