WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (AFP) - IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato will meet next week with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who has savaged the IMF's record in his country, an official said Thursday.
The International Monetary Fund chief will meet with Kirchner in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, IMF spokesmas Thomas Dawson said.
The IMF has yet to clear a third payment to Argentina from a program, agreed in September of last year, which restructured 21 billion dollars in debt to multilateral lenders.
But "we remain in good contact with the authorities," Dawson said.
The IMF is pressing Argentina to show progress in discussions to repay bondholders after a massive default in December 2001, now covering some 104 billion dollars including interest.
Bondholders have rejected Argentina's offer to pay just one-quarter of the bonds' face value.
Last month, Kirchner said that IMF mistakes, highlighted in an audit by an IMF watchdog, had pushed about 15 million people into poverty in the South American nation.
"It's easy for them (IMF officials) to talk about Argentina from their comfortable living rooms," the president said. "But the cost of their errors was that we now have 15 million more poor people in Argentina.
In fact, the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office blamed Argentina for failing to avert the crisis. It also criticised the IMF for backing wayward policies right up to the December 2001 economic collapse.
Rato and Kirchner would likely discuss an Argentine request to delay about one billion dollars in repayments to the IMF until next year, the Fund spokesman said.
The IMF boss planned to go Montevideo later Tuesday before heading to Santiago, Chile on Wednesday to join a September 2-3 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum of finance ministers.
After the APEC talks, he was to visit Brasilia September 3.