Mexico, Peru and Chile were now willing to provide a mechanism for evaluating democratic systems among member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), an initiative that Argentina and Venezuela refused.

The Foreign Minister of Mexico, Patricia Espinosa, launched this idea during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Charter, which brought in Valparaiso (Chile) to foreign ministers and heads of delegations of Member States of the OAS.

"We thought we could do an exercise test or monitoring peer, an exercise routine that might include special commissions visits to countries where they could make direct contact with the different actors of society" proposed Espinosa.

The idea, stated during a roundtable with the participation of all representatives who attended this meeting, endorsed both the Peruvian Foreign Minister, Rafael Roncagliolo, and his Chilean counterpart and host of the event, Alfredo Moreno.

The secretary general of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza, backed the initiative and said the organization is willing to do peer reviews "voluntary" and seek a methodology to do so.

At the press conference after the close of the meeting, which appeared with Insulza and Moreno Espinosa, the head of the OAS said the agency has similar mechanisms to examine the fight against drugs and corruption.

"Each country presents a report on legislation and enforcement and experts from other countries give comments and observations. There is a mechanism or invasive or complaint," said Insulza.

Instead, during his speech at the roundtable, representatives of Argentina and Venezuela rejected the suggestion.

"Argentina is not interested in delegating their responsibilities (...). The Argentina intends to continue exercising their right to monitor its internal political situation," said Chancellor of that country, Hector Timerman.

The minister also expressed his "concern for certain members of the OAS in recent years have turned to reporting on the behavior of other sovereign countries," which in his opinion "creates suspicion."

Meanwhile, the representative of Venezuela to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, argued that "people are the ones to decide how they like democracy and the coming of the inspector," because in his view "that has a background totalitarian."

During the debate there were also disagreements about the desirability of reforming the Democratic Charter, as advocated by the Chilean Government, to give a broader interpretation or supplemented by parallel resolutions.

For this last option is tilted the OAS secretary general, who said "reopen the letter would be a mistake" because it would "come to discuss all your text again."

"The Charter is fine as it is without prejudice to (...), I should improve some aspects," and better define in what cases, in addition to the coup, there is a serious breach of constitutional order, said Insulza.

This document was approved on September 11, 2001 in a special session of the Assembly of the OAS meeting in Lima, on the day of the terrorist attacks in the United States and a date that coincides with the coup that led Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973.

The instrument provides that the democratic order or disorder that seriously impairs the democratic order in a Member State, constitutes an "insurmountable obstacle" to the participation of government in the various bodies of the OAS.

The meeting organized to celebrate this anniversary, which ended Sunday, was inaugurated yesterday by the president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and was attended by twelve foreign ministers of the OAS member countries.

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