President Eduardo Duhalde today called on Argentines to come to the rescue of their recession-wracked country to ensure it does not plunge into violence and chaos.
"We no longer ask ourselves what Argentina owes us, we are defining what we can do and must do for Argentina," he said, paraphrasing former US president John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech.
Flanked by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the UN Development Program (UNDP), President Duhalde called for a dialogue involving all sectors of the society, whose goals must be to restart the economy, "end poverty and injustice, and regain social upward mobility".
Failure to act now, he said in a nationally broadcast speech, would plunge the South American country into "anarchy and fratricide violence".
"Our starting point is a situation of grave social exclusion and extreme injustice," President Duhalde said last night, adding "poverty in our country has reached extremely serious levels".
President Duhalde invited "international economic groups to participate with our business leaders in financing the vast horizon of Argentine business".
But he said Argentina must stand tall before the world. "Every nation must determine its own path, its own style, and negotiate with the same energy and determination as the great nations that we admire," he said in a thinly-veiled reference to upcoming talks with the International Monetary Fund.
President Duhalde's government hopes to start talks with the IMF in the coming weeks and is expected to seek more than $15 billion in financial aid.
AFP