President-Elect Pena Nieto to Visit Several LatAm Countries Next Week EFE
go to original September 13, 2012

Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, shown here on Aug. 16, will begin a tour of six Latin American countries on Monday. (EFE)

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto plans to leave next week on a tour of several countries in Latin America in an effort to "build a multilateral agenda" on issues such as immigration, security and economic development, an official statement said.

Peña Nieto will begin his tour on Sept. 17 in Guatemala and wrap it up on Sept. 24 in Peru. The president-elect will also make stops in Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

The trip will be the first taken by Peña Nieto since Mexico's highest elections tribunal certified his win late last month in the July 1 presidential election, a victory that was challenged by the left on the grounds that the results were tainted.

Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will be inaugurated on Dec. 1, opening the way for the party, which governed Mexico for seven decades, to return to power for the first time since 2000.

The president-elect told reporters last week that he planned a foreign tour to "regain the international leadership" of Mexico, following up on statements made during the campaign about the focus of his foreign policy.

The 46-year-old Peña Nieto is scheduled to meet with Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina and will later have a meeting with the leaders of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica aand Panama.

Perez Molina said last Thursday that Peña Nieto wanted to invite Central America's other presidents to meet with him at the start of his tour.

Peña Nieto will travel next Tuesday to Bogota, where he is slated to meet with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and business leaders.

The president-elect is scheduled to meet on Sept. 19 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and business leaders from Latin America's largest economy.

Peña Nieto is slated to meet the next day with President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia. He will travel on Sept. 21 to Chile for a meeting with President Sebastian Piñera and representatives of the business community.

The Mexican president-elect is scheduled to meet on Sept. 21 with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez in Buenos Aires and will meet the following Monday with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala in Lima.

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