The San Francisco Chronicle | By Robert Collier | January 14, 2004
Leaders from around the Americas ended a two-day summit in Mexico on Tuesday with backslaps and a 13-page declaration of vague commitments to cooperate in economic development, free trade and the fight against poverty.
The 34-nation Summit of the Americas, held in the northeast industrial city of Monterrey, achieved few concrete results, and some leaders criticized it as a protocol-filled waste of time. But President Bush could claim two modest advances -- in one-on-one talks outside the summit, he ended an angry rift with Canada over a U.S. ban on that nation's firms bidding for lucrative contracts in Iraq, and he won an endorsement from Mexican President Vicente Fox of his recently announced plan to reform immigration.
The summit's final declaration included sweeping commitments to crack down on corruption, reduce government secrecy, reduce the time and cost of starting new businesses and improve education and health care, including care for HIV and AIDS patients.
The leaders made an equally imprecise pledge to conclude talks on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an agreement aimed at eliminating customs duties through the hemisphere. But because of strong opposition from Brazil and Venezuela, the pledge left out a U.S. demand for a commitment that the pact be sealed by the end of next year.
Analysts said the trip will allow Bush to claim success on the campaign trail this year, inoculating himself against criticism by Democrats who say he has poisoned U.S. relations with close allies. But these achievements masked the larger failure of the summit to solve increasingly bitter disputes with South American and Caribbean nations over a wide variety of issues.
During bilateral talks Tuesday, Bush told Canada's new prime minister, Paul Martin, that Canada will be eligible for a second round of U.S.-financed reconstruction contracts in Iraq that the administration valued at about $4.5 billion.
Canada, which opposed the war, was punished for its hands-off stance by being omitted from an earlier list of countries the Bush administration said would be eligible for the contracts.
U.S. officials indicated later that the administration also will permit bidding from countries that forgive Iraqi debts, as France, Germany and Russia say they will consider doing. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said officials were considering permitting three or four other countries to bid, but he did not name them.
Bush and Martin also pledged cooperation to combat mad cow disease, which is hurting the beef industries of both countries.
For Bush, the big payoff occurred the day before, when Mexico's Fox accepted an invitation to visit Bush's ranch in Texas and lavishly praised his proposal that would allow migrants to work temporarily in the United States.
Harley Shaiken, chair of the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, said Fox's endorsement would be important for Bush in the 2004 campaign because it protects Bush from criticism by Democrats and Latino leaders who want a more comprehensive immigration proposal.
"By itself, Fox's backing has minimal importance domestically for Bush, but it would have had a much more significant impact if Fox had been critical," Shaiken said. "That would have fractured the political support that Bush is seeking to achieve."
The Monterrey summit was convened to discuss poverty and security, which are burning issues for many Latin American leaders. Bush and his aides failed to switch the focus to free trade. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist who has advocated slowing down the FTAA negotiations, lashed out at free-market policies that have failed to reduce the gap between rich and poor in the region.
"We're talking about a perverse model that has separated in a mistaken way the economic from the social," da Silva said. He noted that despite a decade of free-market policies backed by the United States and the International Monetary Fund, 26 percent of Latin America's population lives on less than $2 a day and 7 of every 10 new jobs are in the informal cash economy.
Public opposition to free trade is growing in many countries, including Mexico, where the North American Free Trade Agreement has failed to boost the economy.
"The trickle-down theory has not worked," said Argentine President Nestor Kirchner.
Argentine diplomats said Kirchner had defied a U.S. suggestion that he not meet at the summit with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whose open support of Fidel Castro has sparked fierce criticism from Washington -- and widespread speculation of U.S. support for moves to eject him from office.
Argentine officials said Kirchner's meeting with Chavez was "a sign that the government has not strayed from its opposition to an automatic alliance with Washington."
The Venezuelan president underscored his dissatisfaction with a U.S.-driven agenda for the hemisphere by saying he had missed Tuesday's lunch with the other leaders because he was on the phone with Libya's Moammar Khadafy planning a summit between Latin American and African nations.
Some analysts have said that the emergence of such leaders as da Silva, Kirchner and Chavez indicates that much of Latin America is swinging to the left -- and toward confrontation with Washington. But that perception is overblown, said Kenza Saadi, a foreign-policy columnist in Milenio, one of Mexico's most influential newspapers.
" 'The New Left in the Americas' is a story that just isn't there," she said. "There are conflicts -- the Brazilians aren't happy with U.S. fingerprinting of their citizens at the airports, and some aren't happy with trade, but it's not major stuff. The Americas remain on the right.
"Even in countries that are now governing from the 'left,' they're not acting that way. This is a different left, much more moderate. The Cold War isn't coming back. Anybody from the left of 20 years ago would never have signed today's agreement."Chronicle news services contributed to this story.E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.The San Francisco Chronicle:
