News stories by Marcela Valente*, page 2

If Brazilian voters elect a woman president next month, what might have appeared to be isolated developments in Chile and Argentina would start to look more like a trend in the southern countries of South America.

At very different paces, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay advance down the path towards annulling or at least neutralising the laws that protected those responsible for human rights crimes committed under their dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), still institutionally rather flimsy according to analysts, is holding a summit meeting in Argentina Tuesday to deal with immediate issues, while the medium and long-term items on its agenda remain pending.

Tuesday's International Court of Justice ruling on the conflict between Argentina and Uruguay over a pulp mill on the Uruguayan side of a border river offers a way out of a dispute that has marred relations between the two countries for several years, diplomats and experts say.