VHeadline News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue reports: The Brazilian Senate has returned a letter sent by Venezuelan Ambassador to Brazil, Julio Garcia Montoya criticizing the delay of Congress in ratifying Venezuela's entry into the Southern Cone Economic Zone (Mercosur). Former Brazilian President and opposition Senator, Fernando Collor, who heads the Senate foreign relations committee, has called the letter "hostile" and mistaken.

While Collor failed to get a vote of censure for the missive, he did manage to get committee approval to have it returned to the Ambassador through diplomatic channels.

The fly in the ointment for the Senate committee appears to have been the Ambassador's refusal to attend a committee hearing to put forward Venezuela's point of view. In his letter the Ambassador accuses Senators of limiting the debate on Venezuela's entry and analysis of the topic to strictly partisan political considerations. The diplomat wrote that if there are doubts about Venezuela's entry to Mercosur, they would appear to be of an ideological and even personal character.

• According to Brazil News Agency, the letter also stated that the Ambassador or anyone else's presence or words at the hearing would not make the slightest difference to the way the debate was being managed by the committee.

The Brazilian lower house had already approved of Venezuela's entry but the Senate has been a stumbling block since it is controlled by an opposition intent on making a political meal of supposed anti-democratic measures undertaken by President Chavez.

Collor insists that there are doubts in the Senate about the "existence of real democracy" in Venezuela, which, he proclaims, is a fundamental condition of entry into Mercosur.

Patrick J. O'Donoghue
news.editor@vheadline.com