That September, ministers gathered in Punta del Este, a sleepy Uruguayan seaside resort, with no TV cameras, let alone demonstrators.
During the debate, thousands of Uruguayans descended on the plaza in front of the legislative palace to wave flyers in the shape of cannabis leaves, smoke hookahs, and brandish banners reading: "cultivating Uruguayan freedom .Others are less high on the idea.
"That is more important than living up to the letter of the INCB treaty".The Uruguayan government has been careful to stress that the law is not meant to encourage consumption.
Argentina has behaved in an un-neighbourly fashion over a huge new paper plant being built by Finland's Metsa-Botnia on the Uruguayan side of their riverine border.
Their deployment follows the failure of 700 Uruguayan UN peacekeepers to intervene in an on-off, month-long fight for the town, which has seen hundreds of civilians massacred, and 250,000 displaced.In this section And it all goes up in flames What's happened to our cash?
Argentines had been trickling across for months to withdraw money from their Uruguayan bank accounts.
But it has been lobbying hard, especially in Latin America.Mexico (see article) and Peru, abstainers in the past, both said they would back a Uruguayan motion.
And their Uruguayan opposite number promoted "a South Atlantic zone of peace", denouncing what he termed the "illegitimate activities of oil exploitation" in waters near the Falklands.Ms Fernández nodded approvingly, while Britain's harried ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, was forced to counter the barrage of accusations.
Foreigners thinking of booking a holiday to Uruguay should be warned that only Uruguayan citizens will be eligible to use the pharmacies.Uruguay's government argues that the law will allow the police to focus on violent crime and on stopping the smuggling of harder drugs.
The two sides have been holding talks aimed at ending the 50-year conflict.Eduardo Galeano, a radical Uruguayan writer, has died, aged 74.
The 12,500-strong United Nations peacekeeping force, called MINUSTAH, became a target of criticism after Nepalese soldiers were tied to a cholera outbreak and four Uruguayan troops were accused of rape.
