President-elect of Paraguay announces return to Unasur

The president-elect of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, affirmed this Tuesday in Brazil that he is in favor of the re-launching of the South American Union of Nations (Unasur) and defended the resumption of bilateral relations with Venezuela.

Peña made the statements after paying a protocol visit to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with whom he shared the vision of working for South American regional integration.

“I told President Lula that I will support the integration process in all areas,” said Peña, citing Unasur, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Prosur, and the Southern Common Market, an economic bloc shared by Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina.

Peña added that he hopes to collaborate with the integration process being carried out by Lula, who, on May 30, summoned the South American presidents to Brasilia to boost regional relations.

This is the first trip made by the Paraguayan president-elect since he won the elections last month.

In this regard, he said that he spoke with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, “to work on reestablishing the integration process of the two countries”.

Unasur was founded in 2008, driven by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Lula himself, but the bloc entered into crisis in 2017 due to disagreements between countries in the region.

As of 2018, half of Unasur’s members suspended their participation of the bloc.

However, Brazil and Argentina announced last month that they will once again participate in Unasur.

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