Kirchner's imminent announcement in New York about Argentine debt

Apart from delivering her speech before the UN and holding bilateral meetings with other heads of state during her stay in New York, president Cristina de Kirchner will try to send a strong signal about Argentina's willingness to pay off the debt. The announcement regarding the Paris Club debt was a failure in terms of market impact. Cabinet Chief, Sergio Massa, and Economy Minister, Carlos Fernández, stayed in Buenos Aires to draft the contents of her speech. There is only one aim: that Argentina can, once again, have access to international credit, in spite of US crisis. Not much imagination is needed to perceive that the announcements have to aim at holdouts who did not agree to the 2005 swap. A law passed that same year prevents reopening the offer. It has emerged that the Argentine government is studying mechanisms for holdouts to swap their defaulted bonds. It appears that all will be presented so that holdouts are the ones making the offer and not Argentina. The announcement will probably be made on Thursday, when Cristina de Kirchner participates in a lunch at the Council of the Americas. But the truth is that, as it happened with the Paris Club, the Argentine government may only partially fulfill its goal. With its inflation measurement, the Argentine Statistics and Census Institute (INDEC) poses a mini-default month after month to indexed bondholders.

New York (special correspondent) - Cristina de Kirchner began yesterday her first trip to New York as Head of State, under the pressure of two issues that complicate the agenda of her speeches, presentations, and meetings with businessmen, which have been prepared months ago: Antonini Wilson's declaration before Miami Court on the suitcase scandal, and investors' pressure about holdouts' situation and the payment of the Paris Club debt.

However, among the issues that concern Cristina de Kirchner in this city, bilateral meetings with other presidents are undoubtedly the most important. Yesterday some new meetings were added to her agenda. For example, a meeting with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been arranged for Thursday at 3:30 p.m. at the UN building. Except for the meeting that will be held with Austrian President Heinz Fisher at the Four Seasons hotel, because both presidents are hosted there, the rest of the meetings -with Silvio Berlusconi, or Morocco's Prime Minister- will be held at the UN premises. Cristina de Kirchner will begin her day today with a meeting with Inter-American Development Bank's president, Luis Alberto Moreno, at 11 a.m. After this meeting, she will have lunch with the influential Council of Foreign Relations, a «think tank» of US foreign politics. The audience will not be indulgent with the Argentine President: its members are mostly Republicans who will question Argentine isolation and its denial to sign free trade agreements with the US. The Council's chairman, David Rockefeller, will attend the meeting.

These encounters will only be the prelude to a day that has as its main concern Argentina's relation with companies, with a visit to NASDAQ facilities at 3:30 p.m. The Argentine government fears holdouts representatives -bondholders left out of the 2005 swap-, who are meeting this week in New York, will be there waiting to protest. Little can be done by the government to avoid a demonstration of this kind at a time when the amount of people in New York's Middletown area, where NASDAQ premises are located, will be uncontrollable.

The effectiveness of this presidential visit to NASDAQ facilities remains doubtful. Cristina de Kirchner should have been present at the trading session opening time, although at that time she will try to compensate her lack of prominence with a meeting held between representatives of technological companies and the Argentine ambassador to the US, Héctor Timerman.

Tomorrow will be a key day for Cristina de Kirchner, not only due to her speech before the Annual UN Assembly. At 6:30 p.m., the opening of a graphic exhibition called «Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo: 30 years» will take place in the same building of the United Nations, where president Kirchner will speak once again, together with UN Secretary General Bank Ki-Moon. Argentine Ambassador to the UN Jorge Argüello promised other presidential officials would be present.