Qué dijo Roberta Jacobson (Depto de Estado) sobre Argentina?

Extracto de la pregunta de Clarín y de la respuesta:

Conferencia de prensa: Roberta Jacobson, Subsecretaria para Asuntos Hemisféricos del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU

State Department Foreign Press Center Briefing (As Released by the State Department) Subject: “Overview of Recent Travel to Central America and the Western Hemisphere Affairs Agenda”Briefer: Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson
Location: The Foreign Press Center, Washington, D.C.Time: 3:30 p.m. EDT, Date: Wednesday, July 11, 2012

MODERATOR: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. Today, we are pleased to have with us Roberta Jacobson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. On June 26th through the 29th, she traveled to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. She met with leaders with from all sectors of Central American society to advance our regional partnership for a more secure and prosperous Central America. She will discuss the accomplishments of this trip and review the goals of the Western Hemisphere agenda, and it will then be opened for questions and answers. Thank you.

(...)

Q: Yes. Hello. I am Ana Baron from Clarin of Argentina. Thank you very much for this press conference. I have two questions on Argentina. First of all, while we know that trade restrictions was one of the subjects you discussed on your last trip to Argentina, so I wanted to know since then there was the United States complaint in the WTO. Now Argentina, some time ago — some minutes ago, hours ago — has presented a complaint against the lemons and meat restrictions in U.S. market. So I wanted to know if we are assisting to a little trade war between the two countries.

And second, I have a question of narco-trafficking. You were talking a lot about narco-trafficking in Central America. Since the plane — the military plane was detained in Ezeiza, it seems that the cooperation between the two countries has diminished significantly. I wanted to know if this is a subject that worries and if you see some prospective of ameliorating the relationship at this — on this subject.

MS. JACOBSON: Thank you. I think on the first point, on the trade issues, it certainly wasn’t the central part — central component of my visit there. I’m not a trade expert for the U.S. Government. But I certainly did have conversations, and we continue, obviously, as you note, in these movements more recently to continue to have conversations with Argentina about concerns that we have, whether on specific trade issues or on import restrictions and other things that U.S. companies are finding difficult in Argentina. We continue again to look for a way that we can cooperate on these issues, but we do think that there are international rules and regulations that we all have to abide by. And it’s one of the reasons why the WTO is there, why organizations like ICSID or SIAVE (ph)*, the organization to arbitrate financial disputes. What we believe in is a rules-based system in which folks actually comply with the rules, which we will do when the decisions go against us and we hope other countries will do when decisions go against them.

So we’re still trying to work through all of these issues, but I will say that there is a desire on both parties sides, I think — certainly speaking for the United States Government — to try and resolve those issues in as productive a way as we can, and to try and recognize that we have lots of other components of a bilateral relationship that can move ahead. And we want to be sure that while we work on those economic, commercial, or trade problems that we may have in the relationship, they do not, frankly, bleed into other areas of the relationship where we have a more positive engagement and we are able to move forward.

When I was in Argentina in February, two of the things that I worked on and that I think that I’m particularly excited about are moving forward on educational exchanges, which, frankly, are pretty low between Argentina and the United States. I think there’s head room there, room to grow.

And so we’ve moved forward with an agreement with the Argentine Government on some additional scholarships and pushing up those numbers. And I had a meeting with 13 rectors of universities that was very productive, as well as with the Minister of Education. But we also signed a sister parks agreement for our national parks, which I think is also very important, and was very impressed by the Argentine presentation on that.

In following up on that, we now have — we had the NASA administrator who went to Argentina. And we have Tecnopolis, I think opening this week perhaps in Argentina, with an exhibit from the United States. So there’s lots of other areas in which we can cooperate.

Getting to your second question because I think it relates, obviously cooperating on narcotics is one of those areas where I think that we should still be able to work together regardless of other problems. And it’s also true that cooperation on security issues, in particular narcotics/counternarcotics efforts, was clearly set back by the incident last year. I am pretty optimistic that we’re going to be able to move ahead on a cooperative agenda on narcotics issues. I think there is a desire on the part of the Argentine Government to move ahead on that, and I certainly will confirm that there is a strong desire on our part.

So I’m more optimistic probably even than I was when I was in Argentina four or five months ago that we can move ahead on that productively.