Key South American leaders applauded Nicanor Duarte's inauguration as Paraguay's 47th president, then joined him in declaring a united diplomatic front against drug trafficking and terrorism on their continent.
Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador and Bolivia's Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada gave Duarte his first official business Friday as those leaders and Peru's vice president signed the "Declaration of Asuncion" pledging a political alliance in the war on drugs.
They gathered for a day of red carpet pomp as the 47-year-old Duarte began a five-year term by pledging to tackle extreme poverty and endemic corruption in Paraguay, a landlocked nation of 5.5 million people.
An easy election winner against two rivals last April 28, Duarte is a veteran of the Colorado Party that has governed Paraguay for 54 years, through dictatorship and democracy. He came in amid high popular expectations that he would be a reformer from within his own party for a country in economic disarray.
Duarte used his inaugural address to announce a war on corruption in a country where cronyism and trafficking in favors is a higher national concern than deep poverty.
Punching his fist in the air, he vowed to rid Paraguay of illegal factories making knockoff goods, battle tax evasion and fight money launderers, drug traffickers and widespread trading in contraband goods that transit this nation.
"We are going to wage war on the mafias," the stocky, bespectacled president almost shouted at a tightly guarded ceremony outside Congress. "We will take the fight to all those involved in piracy and contraband trafficking."
The Colorados have dominated politics in this South American nation of since 1947, through frequent crises, coups, unrest and grinding poverty. No other party currently in national power has governed longer in Latin America.
The son of a police officer and a seamstress, Duarte said he would help the poor and disenfranchised in a country where 64 percent of the population is mired in poverty.
As a center-left politician, he said he would not slavishly follow the unabashed free market principles that have yet to bring prosperity to Paraguay.
Duarte succeeded Luis Gonzalez Macchi, who was appointed by the Senate four years ago amid a political crisis touched off by bloody street protests and the resignation of his predecessor. Paraguay has stumbled along through crises ever since the end of Alfredo Stroessner's decades-long military dictatorship in 1989.
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