Summit in Mexico
Editorial
Stabroek News
January 28, 2004
Summitry and in particular the recent Special Summit of the Americas in Mexico has been more discussed in the local media including the letter columns than perhaps any other international conference in recent times. This came about because of the controversy which developed over the decision of President Jagdeo to go on a State Visit to India instead of attending the Summit in Mexico.
Guyana's participation in Summitry is not a new idea in public awareness. There are the regular Caricom Summits and the biennial Commonwealth Summits and once making more of a flutter than those were the Non-Aligned Summit (NAM). The NAM Summit ranked at that time as the major event on the foreign affairs calendar. It was an occasion on which Guyana was expected to make a mark in world affairs and did.
Leaving aside for the moment the actual Conference transactions, participation of a small state like Guyana in a summit provides at least three advantages. First, in the absence of a wide network of diplomatic missions it provides opportunities to establish personal contacts and to collect information and support relevant to Guyana's objectives.
Second, in the specific case of the Summit of the Americas it is the hard truth that the Black Caribbean is still regarded by Latin America as a kind of inconvenient appendage on Latin America. It is therefore necessary through effective participation in the Summit and other meetings to assert the identity of the Caribbean as separate but at the same time an integral part of Latin America. It is imperative to steadily work at this as most global negotiations are conducted from a regional base with the Caribbean included in the Latin American group. The Caribbean has nevertheless made breakthroughs. Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally as a former President of the UN General Assembly and Foreign Minister Hunte of St Lucia the current President were chosen by the Latin American Group.
The third advantage of participation at the Summit level is the building of diplomatic solidarity at the highest level as a bulwark against territorial threats. The final communiqué of the recent Summit, called the Declaration of Nueva Leon, notes that fourteen new leaders (out of 32) have taken office since the Third Summit in Quebec city, three years ago. The Summit thus provides a unique opportunity for getting to know them.
Turning to the outcome of the Summit itself there is only its Declaration to go on. Guyana was represented by a heavyweight delegation consisting of the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation and Guyana's Ambassador to Washington. However, and not unusually, there has been no report on their participation - the only news item being about Minister Rohee in the absence of his visa making his way circuitously through the southern route across the Caribbean.
Likewise there is little information on Caricom's participation. Prime Minister Manning withdrew at the last moment, a decision which also attracted controversy. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves was there and so was President Aristide and (on the basis of TV coverage) President Venetiaan of Suriname was also present.
In several key states of Latin America there have been over the last year widespread protests and disorders and incipient insurgency. Many of the protests have been directed towards the rejection of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. In Argentina the calling into question of free trade policies and other elements of the so-called Washington Consensus had forced the President into exile to be followed in a few weeks in quick succession by four other presidents. More recently in Bolivia the very recently elected President had likewise fled into exile after prolonged protests and riots. The position and dilemmas of President Chavez of Venezuela are well known. In Brazil nationwide discontent had led to its election of the first left-wing President Lula da Silva. And there is threatened disorder in Ecuador, Peru and elsewhere, the continent simmers.
But the Summit's Declaration gives no inkling of such turbulence. Instead in its final document the Summit welcomes "the progress achieved to date toward the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and takes note with satisfaction of the balanced results of the VIII Ministerial Meeting of the FTAA held in Miami in November 2003. "We support" the Declaration states, "the agreement of ministers on the framework and calendar adopted for concluding the negotiations for the FTAA in the established timetable which will most effectively foster economic growth, the reduction of poverty, development and integration through trade liberalisation, contributing to the achievement of the broad Summit objectives."
The reference to the Miami conference is truly astonishing as it is generally agreed that as a result of the sharp disagreement between the US and Brazilian delegations there was a low level mini-agreement which went no further than an outline and which has been described by a Brazilian diplomat Dr Paulo Wrobel of its Embassy in London as "a watered down FTAA a la carte."
President Bush for his part in his Summit address unwittingly pointed to the disarray when he announced that the US had begun negotiations with the Dominican Republic, the Andean group and will shortly open negotiations with Panama. The negotiations with Central America have already been concluded.
But the paragraph from the declaration, quoted was clearly music to the ears of the White House in an election year.
The only dissent came from Venezuela which entered a reservation on the FTAA paragraph "because of questions of principle and profound differences regarding the concept and philosophy of the proposed model and because of the manner in which specific aspects and established time frames are addressed. We ratify our commitment, the Venezuelan reservation goes on, to the consolidation of a regional fair trade bloc as the basis for strengthening integration. This process must consider each country's particular cultural, social and political characteristics, sovereignty and constitutionality, and the level and size of its economy in order to guarantee fair treatment."
Another dominant US concern which likewise resonates powerfully through the Summit document is the reaffirmation of the commitment to democracy or more precisely to the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The Summit reaffirmed the charter provision to "coordinate immediate action wherever democracy is threatened in any of our countries...."
It should be explained that under this Charter if the government of a member state [of the OAS] considers that "its democratic political institutional process or its legitimate exercise of power is at risk it may request assistance from the Secretary-General [of the OAS] or the Permanent Council [of the OAS] for the strengthening and preservation of its democratic system." The Permanent Council if it finds that the 'system' has been altered may adopt decisions it deems appropriate.
The language is vague but what is certainly not vague is the US administration's view of the Charter. The US Permanent Representative to the OAS, Roger Noriega, in a lecture to the Heritage Foundation in Washington has asserted that "resolutions approved by the OAS are not rhetoric. They represent legislation that sets policy for the OAS Member Governments."
A major over-arching issue was not, as usual, on the Agenda in Monterrey, namely the exclusion of Cuba. No one would wish to condone the continuing suppression of freedom of expression and the jailing of dissidents in Cuba. On the other hand it would be like the ostrich hiding its head not to acknowledge that the smouldering discontents and despair of the poor and hard driven all over Latin America still see in Cuba a flag to which they can tie their hopes. Several major Latin American states have linkages with Cuba. Mexico has never severed those links. Chavez has deepened linkages and one of the first acts of President Lula da Silva was to lead a delegation to Havana. Yet the question of Cuba is never raised.
Despite the fact that Latin America may no longer be on the front burner because of the US preoccupation with the war on terror, it is clear that the US hegemonial writ continues to run deep through the continent.
In short, the Summits of the Americas like the one just concluded is not only a forum of regional states, it is a powerful instrument of US foreign policy from which Caricom cannot easily stand aside.