Summit of Obama and Chavez

Prime Minister Patrick Manning may be the host of the Fifth Summit of the Americas of the Americas which gets underway today at the Hyatt Regency Hotel but the stars of this three-day meeting will certainly be United States President Barack Obama and controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Ahead of the Summit, Chavez has thrown a spanner in the works by emphasising that he will not be signing the Declaration of Port of Spain because of the exclusion of Cuba from the meeting.

Technocrats sweated the better part of a year of meetings to hammer out the declaration which will be ratified by the 34 leaders at this weekend’s plenary session.

Chavez, who took the unexpected step of scheduling a two-day meeting of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) in Venezuela to discuss matters relating to regional integration, for some time, has been protesting the non-inclusion of Cuba at the meeting.

At the ALBA conference, he questioned articles 53 and 57 of the 66-article declaration which leaders are expected to sign. These two articles refer to human rights and democracy as well as the need to protect the independence and mechanisms of the Inter-American system necessary to achieve this objective.

He sees the final declaration as “a major stumbling block” and wants an immediate end to the 47-year American embargo on trade with Cuba.

Earlier this week, Obama announced the lifting of restrictions on travel to Cuba as well as the easier flow of remittances from the United States.

Obama, unlike all other American presidents since 1962, has, therefore, given more than a hint of his intentions to begin a normalisation of relations with Cuba: the decisions this week was the first step although Latin America and the Caribbean believe that the time has come to remove the embargo and obviously this will be a major item at the Summit.

Obama, however, stated in Mexico that Cuba needs actions “grounded in human rights”.

Cuban President Raul Castro promptly responded by saying that Cuba is prepared to have dialogue with the United States.

While Chavez is expected to get backing for his Cuban stance from several of the 34 leaders, international observers believe that the major issue will be the global economic crisis.

Latin America where some 300 million live below the poverty line has been hard hit by the global recession; money from the international lending agencies has dried up and wherever funds are available it is at high interest rates.

Chavez, who has used oil to assist his South American and Caribbean neighbours, is calling for US $200 billion in soft loans for the region: Obama who proposed, at the recent G-20 meeting, US$1 trillion to be pumped into the International Money Fund (IMF) to be used as a loan facility to help cash-strapped nations may, probably, come up with his own proposals to bankroll Latin America’s weak economies.

He has signalled new relations with Latin America based on “sustaining a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security.”

His visit to Mexico was the first by an American President in 12 years (his visit to Trinidad and Tobago is the first by an American President) and, for starters, agreement was reached on combating the neighbouring country’s dreadful drug trade.

Obama is seen as a president willing to act swiftly and decisively and prepared to overturn decades of American hegemonic policies although the Cuban embargo remains a sore point.

What he says and does at the Summit may very well overshadow Chavez’s theatrics in that he will be conveying a positive new image of America to the region.

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