[NYTr] Argentine President Will Not Accept Foreign Pressure

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Granma Daily - Dec 14, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art26.html

Argentine President Will Not Accept Foreign Pressure

Denies tendentious statements coming from the United States

BUENOS AIRES, December 13.— Argentina’s new president, Cristina
Fernandez, spoke out on television on Thursday against what she called
an example of "the garbage dumps of international politics."

The recently inaugurated leader responded to a claim lodged in a Miami
criminal case in the United States that close to US $800,000, which
businessman Guido Antonini Wilson tried to introduce into Argentina
last August, was sent by the Venezuelan government to finance her
electoral campaign, reported ANSA.

Visibly perturbed in her first reaction to the news item circulated in
Miami, Fernandez reiterated her commitment to the South Common Market
(Mercosur) and the right to friendship with Venezuela, emphasizing,
"I’m not going to be pressured."

Fernandez held the United States government responsible for the
accusation in an effort to condition Argentine Foreign policy. The
president said she would maintain the policy of her predecessor and
husband Nestor Kirchner, supporting South American integration and
friendship with Venezuela and its president.

"More than friends, they [the US] want subservient and subordinated
countries," said Fernandez during a press conference at government
headquarters on the implementation of a program to shut down and clean
up the garbage dumps in the Matanza-Riachuelo watershed, one of the 30
most contaminated places in the world.

"This way of making regional politics is not going to work with
Argentina," warned Fernandez in another reference to Washington.
"Argentina has never needed to be told who its friends should be. We
hold a profound belief in the self determination."

This latest maneuver is seen as a move to justify a further escalation
of hostilities against Venezuela by the White House, desperately
seeking any pretext against the oil rich country.