(Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias) - "Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua evaluate the progress of common schedules contained on the project of integration called Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), in the continuation of the cabinet ministers of the mechanism.

During the encounter will also be followed the progress of the negotiations about the ALBA Bank, while they continue to advance on the process of institutionalization of the group and to set the schedule of the following meetings, reported Prensa Latina.

On the inauguration of the II Council of Ministers of the ALBA there were involved the chancellors Felipe Pérez Roque (Cuba) and David Choquehuanca (Bolivia).

Venezuela was represented by vice chancellor Rodolfo Sanz, while awaiting the incorporation of the Minister of People's Power for Foreign Relations, Nicolás Maduro, while the Nicaraguan delegation was headed by the minister president of the Emergency Social Fund, Nelson Artola.

During the opening, Pérez Roque affirmed that the integration proposal of the ALBA is the only way to the development of Latin America, understood as integration based on cooperation and solidarity, away from neoliberalism.

''We understand that no country alone can afford the big challenges of the world of today,' he added.

He stated that the essential principle of that project is the widest solidarity among the American countries, which has the final aim of change them into more fair, cultured and participative societies.

'We are convinced that the ALBA will not become reality through mercantilist and selfish criteria, but through the widest and deep practice of coordination and integration,' he indicated.

Likewise, he added that in this model, commerce and investment do not constitute an end itself but the instruments to achieve a fair development, at the time that he proposes an active participation of the State as a regulator and coordinator body.

Favoring the project, the diplomat said that there are indisputable actions on the social, economical and energetic fields, and he mentioned the more than 800 thousand people in the area who had eye operations under the Miracle Mission program.

The ALBA is an integration mechanism of solidarity proposed by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, to diminish the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, promoted by the United States".