Unasur defense ministers call for resources protection, new defense policy

Defense ministers of the South American Union of Nations (Unasur) agreed on Friday to enforce "strategic policies to defend and preserve natural resources" in the region and to work on its own agenda.

They did that at a two-day meeting of the Unasur Center for Strategic Defense Studies.

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said the region has to protect its assets whose strategic importance is growing, referring to 25 percent of the world's water resources and 123 billion barrels of proved oil reserves.

Many ministers criticized the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Pact or TIAR), signed in 1947 by many countries of the Americas. The treaty, whose central principle holds that an attack on one is to be considered an attack on all, has not been invoked since 1960.

"It is time that in the Unasur we dismantle the TIAR," Ecuadorian Defense Minister Javier Ponce said, adding that it's the first time the union tried to have a defense agenda at the margin of the United States' tutelage.

Bolivian Defense Minister Maria Chacon Rendon also called on the Unasur to have "its own defense policies."

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