Will Obama end Cuban embargo in Trinidad?
Who said talk is cheap?
The Fifth Summit of the Americas which will be held in Port of Spain, Trinidad, for only three days- from the weekend of April 17-19 – will cost this energy endowed country of 1.3 million a whopping TT $500 million (US$ 84 million).
That’s a lot of money for three days of talk – and Trinidadians are not too amused at the price tag, particularly since the hard times have begun to kick in.
Some people are calling on the Government, hit by declining oil and gas revenues, to seek external assistance to host the summit with one former diplomat, Stephen Kangal, recommending the biggest ever international conference to be held in Trinidad and Tobago to be postponed until 2010 “to allow enough time for technocrats, private sector organisations and NGOs (non-Governmental organisations ) to forge and brainstorm a completely new, more relevant and people- centred agenda.”
Agenda may be one issue; the question of accommodation is another.
There are simply not sufficient hotel rooms on the island for the over 3,000 delegates, pressmen and businessmen who will converge from some 34 countries in the hemisphere, including the United States.
Three cruise ships docked on the city waterfront, near where the Summit will be held, will serve as floating hotels.
United States President Barack Obama is expected to attend the talks which has an agenda which some say reads like a George W. Bush script.
Actually, the agenda was set by Prime Minister Patrick Manning in June last year.
The meeting will discuss the question of ”securing our citizens’ future by promoting human prosperity, energy security and environmental sustainability.”
Quite a mouthful and a tempting theme for the platitudes and flowery oratory so common in this part of the world.
Ambassador Luis Alberto Rodriguez, who was hired by the TT Government to organise the summit, told this reporter, about a year ago, that the issue of a proposed hemispheric free trade bloc (the Free Trade Area of the Americas) was dead and that the 45-year US trade embargo on Cuba and other related topics would not be on agenda.
In fact, while the English speaking Caribbean and its free trade group, Caricom, have been calling for the United States to end the Cuban embargo, Cuba will not be attending the meeting.
This is simply because Cuba was suspended from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in the 1960s and has not been attending these hemispheric gatherings although it should be noted that it has observer status at Caricom summits.
More than that: Cuba plays an active part in the development of Caricom, giving hundreds of scholarships to students from the various islands to study medicine, agriculture, journalism etc.
Prime Minister Manning,who benefited from heart surgery in Cuba in the 1990s, in December, underwent a free operation there to remove a cancerous kidney.
Cuban President Raul Castro’s allies in the region, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales are expected to attend and it is anticipated that Chavez may very well raise the question of Cuba’s long isolation, a matter which should receive support from the 15-member Caricom trade bloc.
Obama appears to be a different American President and may very well hint of a change of mind regarding relations with the Communist country, according to some observers.
Obama has already ordered the closure of the detention centre in Guantanamo Cuba where the United States has been holding suspected terrorists without trial.
Trinidad and Tobago is the smallest country to host such a summit; The first one was held in Miami in 1994, the second in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in 1996, the third in Quebec, Canada, in 2001 and the fourth in Mar Del Plata, Argentina in 2004.
There will be another major international meeting scheduled for November- the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference- which will be attended by heads of state, including Britain’s Queen Elizabeth who is head of the British Commonwealth, from some 54 countries.
The timing of all of this may be a bit skewed given the worsening economic situation with energy and commodity prices falling and workers losing their jobs.
Currently, the public is paying more attention to the financial troubles of the country’s and the Caribbean’s biggest conglomerate, C.L. Financial, event and preparations to enjoy the annual Carnival festivities scheduled to be held on February 23 and 24.
After Carnival, security arrangements for the Summit will begin with the arrival of some 500 soldiers and policemen from Caricom here in addition with President Obama’s security detail.
The Airport Authority decided to implement decidedly unique security measures by cutting down some 50 trees in the airport’s parking lot!
Insularity prevails here and few Trinidadians have any interest in Latin American affairs or can speak a foreign language.
About two dozen of the 34 leaders attending the Summit will be Spanish speakers as would be thousands of visitors.
But the summit organisers have a serious shortage of Spanish-speaking staff and the preparations are progressing slowly. Opposition Senator Tim Gopeesingh said:
“I understand that some Latin American counties are complaining about the pace of the preparations and that some of the Secretariat staff have resigned in disgust Gopiesingh, a member of the United National Congress (UNC) told this reporter.
He said that Rodriguez reported directly to Manning and was not operating efficiently despite being paid an astronomical salary.
Several efforts by this reporter to get Rodriguez to comment on these allegations turned out to be futile.
I met Rodriguez in Caracas, Venezuela in the early 1990s when I was working there as a correspondent of the Associated Press International News Agency and he was working with the Andean Development Corporation.
A professional banker with dual Trinidadian-Venezuelan citizenship, Rodriguez was later appointed to an executive position with the Economic System for Latin America (SELA).
I met him on several occasions either socially or on official business and he told me that he was born in Woodbrook, Port of Spain of Venezuelan parents and attended pubic school in England.
He left Venezuela to take up a post with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington.
The summit preparation team has generally operated under a shroud of secrecy with little contact with the local press.
Manning has promised that the summit will bring “immeasurable” benefits to the country, but did not name any.
Rodriguez told reporters that billions of dollars in foreign direct investment would flow from this almighty talk-shop.
“If we do this right, I assure you that TT will have so many opportunities that I hoper we are ready for it”, he assured the public.
However, several days later, Energy Minister Conrad Enill was singing a completely different song ahead of the Summit.
Enill told a petroleum conference that the reality was that international credit had, in fact, dried up for several downstream energy projects and the Venezuelan partner for a major aluminium plant, Alutrint, had backed out.
Doom and gloom ahead of the summit.
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[...] the issue, as the TntInsider has hinted in an earlier article, will be the re-admission of Cuba into the hemispheric system. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who reportedly feels that the Summit should be rescheduled, will [...]