Americas leaders hold summit with eye on growth, equity

by Michael Langan

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

MONTERREY, Mexico (AFP): Leaders from the Americas gathered here Monday to start a summit to be dominated by the fight against terrorism, poverty and corruption, and expanding free trade.

US President George W. Bush is to meet with a number of other leaders on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas including host president Vicente Fox, who he will see Tuesday aiming to mend a once-close personal relationship, strained by Mexico's opposition to the US-led war in Iraq.

"The White House regards Fox as a good friend. We have a lot of common challenges" Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said.

He said the two leaders, both ex-businessmen with ranches and a love for cowboy boots, would address immigration and border issues in their talks.

Bush, who is eager to attract Hispanic voters ahead of the US presidential election in November, last week announced US immigration reforms which Fox has long pushed for.

Half of the eight million undocumented workers in the United States are of Mexicans. The money they send home, 12 billion dollars last year, is the country's number two source of foreign revenue after oil.

The summit faces tough issues, including cooperating against terrorism, growth with equity, democratic rule and social development. The leaders do not agree widely on how to achieve them.

Bush was to meet later Monday with Chile's moderate socialist president, Ricardo Lagos, and with his leftist Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Half of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean lives in poverty, and Bush's prescription is a planned Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

But some in Latin America fear free trade will not be enough to lift people out of poverty.

FTAA negotiations are due to conclude by 2005, but Brazil long has dragged its feet. Brazil and other countries are urging the United States to drop agricultural subsidies and it says it first wants to better consolidate its Mercosur trade bloc.

Meanwhile, the United States, European Union and many Asian nations are scrambling to increase trade with the natural resource-rich region.

The FTAA aims to create the world's largest free trade area with a market of some 800 million people. In November, FTAA negotiators unveiled an interim deal dramatically scaling back the original plan for a free trade bloc of 34 nations agreed to in 1994.

The result is a face-saving "FTAA a la carte," in which the United States reaches out to individual countries ready for free trade to underscore some progress, and shows flexibility with those unwilling or unable to join the group by 2005.

Washington wants to ensure further ground is not lost.

Other leaders, such as Argentina's center-left President Nestor Kirchner, Lula and Canada's new Prime Minister Paul Martin will be attending their first Summit of the Americas.

Bush was due to see all three as part of key meetings on the Monterrey sidelines, as well as Bolivian President Carlos Mesa and leaders of the Caribbean Community.

He is not to meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, though Venezuela is a key US oil supplier. Chavez has riled the United States with close ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro, and harsh criticism of the US-led war in Iraq.

Cuba, the only communist-run state in the region, was not invited to the meeting as its leadership was not democratically elected. 

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