Uruguay President Criticizes Prosur Initiative, 'Will Produce Same Errors'

Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez questioned Thursday the Colombian-Chilean initiative to create a new integration bloc to replace the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and argued that the region has a number of integration processes that clash, leading to inefficiency.

RELATED: Ecuador's Ex-President Rafael Correa on UNASUR 'Disintegration'

"Latin America has an enormous amount of regional integration processes: the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI). We are the most integrationist region in the world, We have an enormous vocation for integration, but it is the most inefficient: we superimpose one process on top of another, and another, until when?" Vazquez said at a press conference prior to the United Nations High-Level Conference on South-South Cooperation developed in Buenos Aires.

The neoliberal Colombian government proposed in Jan. 2019 launching a new economic integration organization, Prosur, to replace UNASUR, begun by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. 

Prosur would focus on themes such as regional coordination and cooperation of public policy, defense of democracy, promotion of the separation of powers, and the fostering of market economies.

Every country on the Latin American continent will be free to join, with the exception of Venezuela.

Tabare Vazquez announced that Uruguay will participate in the meeting only as an observer member next Friday in Santiago, Chile.

Local media suggested that Argentine President Mauricio Macri and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro would give their support to Prosur.

Vazquez explained that when UNASUR was created, "the error" was made that "it had a certain political ideology" and that the creation of another organism such as the mentioned Prosur with an "ideological political" purpose would produce the same error.

Last week, Ecuador, led by Lenin Moreno, announced the withdrawing from the UNASUR bloc, which left the regional organization with only five of its original 12 members.