BRASILIA, May 23: A new South American union was born on Friday as leaders of the region’s 12 nations set out to create a continental parliament.

Some see the new organisation, Unasur, as a regional version of the European Union. Summit host Brazil wants it to help coordinate defence affairs across South America and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez calls it a ‘counterweight’ to the United States.

“The number one enemy of the union of the south is the empire of the United States,” Mr Chavez said after arriving in Brazil’s capital. “It’s very elementary: divide and conquer.”

The socialist crusader said the US was “trying to generate wars in South America and tries to halt advances in the this project”.

Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva invited other Latin American and Caribbean nations to join the venture. “Unasur is … open to all the region,” he said.

But South American leaders still found their own reasons for division.

Unasur’s first secretary-general, Rodrigo Borja, resigned on Thursday, before the organisation was formally born. He complained that some leaders had baulked at his vision of putting other regional trade blocs, including Mercosur and the Andean Community, under Unasur’s authority.

The union’s inaugural meeting was moved from Colombia after that nation raided a guerrilla camp in Ecuador, sparking a crisis in regional relations. The organisation was first proposed at a 2004 summit in Peru. —AP