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Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba to sign eight cooperation agreements

Taken from Granma

LA PAZ, May 24, 2006 — Eight cooperation agreements covering a variety of areas that will strengthen the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) are to be signed during a meeting between Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.

Bolivian presidential spokesman Alex Contreras said the agreements are to be signed next Friday, PL reported.

Contreras said that part of the agreements already negotiated deal with cooperation in the fields of education and health, Cuban strengths now being shared with Bolivia and Venezuela.

Agreements will also be signed between La Paz and Caracas for joint development projects between the state-run hydrocarbon enterprises of both nations.

By virtue of those agreements, as well as three asphalt factories, natural gas production plants will be established, which will make it possible, Contreras said, for Bolivia to stop being simply a gas vendor and begin to export derivatives.

An agreement will also be signed for the establishment of a bi-national enterprise, Minera de Sur (Minersur), which according to Walter Villarroel, minister of mining, will develop projects in a number of regions.

Villarroel left open the possibility that Minersur would operate in the giant iron mine in Mutún, near the border with Brazil, where the government is putting out to tender internationally the establishment of an iron and steel industry.

Hugo Salvatierra, minister of rural and agricultural development, noted the importance of an agreement for $100 million in credit that Venezuela will provide a support fund for small producers, which will be decisive to the agricultural sector.

Other agreements will facilitate the establishment of centers for the legal industrialization of the coca leaf and the development of agribusiness projects for coffee, tea and soy, he added.

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