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Uruguay Other Regions
Since 1926 and renewed in 1943, Uruguay has had
diplomatic
and trade relations with the Soviet Union, longer than any
other
South American nation. Relations were at a relatively low
level
during the military regime. In May 1985, the Sanguinetti
government authorized the reopening of the
Soviet-Uruguayan
Cultural Center and, in September 1986, the opening of an
office
of the Soviet airline Aeroflot (Air Fleet) in Montevideo,
with
flights to Moscow beginning in 1987. During a meeting with
Soviet
foreign affairs minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze at the UN
on
September 24, 1985, Sanguinetti asked for the Soviet
Union's
support for Uruguay's desire to join the group of nations
operating in Antarctica (which Uruguay subsequently
joined).
Shevardnadze later visited Uruguay in October 1987.
In the first visit of a Uruguayan president to the
Soviet
Union, Sanguinetti visited Moscow in March 1988 and held a
"cordial and frank" two-hour meeting with General
Secretary
Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Sanguinetti's visit strengthened
trade,
economic, and cultural relations, to include the
establishment of
a joint Soviet-Uruguayan company. Sanguinetti also visited
certain East European countries, including the German
Democratic
Republic (East Germany), and established trade relations.
Optimistic about trade prospects, Uruguay established
diplomatic and formal commercial relations with China on
February
3, 1988. By 1990 China was Uruguay's fourth largest
trading
partner. Although both countries had conducted bilateral
trade,
diplomatic relations had been nonexistent since 1949. With
the
opening of diplomatic ties with China, Uruguay
simultaneously
severed relations with Taiwan. In November 1988,
Sanguinetti paid
a six-day official visit to China at the head of an
eighty-member
delegation and signed four agreements designed to further
strengthen bilateral relations. China's President Yang
Shangkun
reciprocated with a visit to Uruguay in May 1990. The
Sanguinetti
government also established trade ties with Malaysia and
Singapore and was planning to reopen Uruguay's mission in
India.
When Sanguinetti assumed office, Uruguay had only four
resident ambassadors in all of the Middle East and Africa.
By
1988 Uruguay had opened resident missions in Algeria and
Côte
d'Ivoire, had reestablished relations with Tanzania, and
had
established ties with Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain. In May
1986, the
Sanguinetti government criticized what it termed the
sovereignty
and territorial integrity violations committed by the
South
African government against neighboring countries. It also
denounced apartheid and stated its support for the peoples
and
governments of Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe against
South
African aggression. Although the Sanguinetti government
announced
in May 1986 that it was unwilling to recognize the
Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), which it characterized as a
terrorist organization, it accorded an official reception
at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a PLO delegation
participating in
the first parliamentary congress of socialist parties in
Latin
America and the Caribbean in June 1989.
Data as of December 1990
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