---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 10:18:57 -0800
From: David Mozer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: an WASAN <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [WASAN] Monterrey Conference
I am forwarding the following pieces because, while not specifically about
Africa, the International Conference on Development Financing, which is
discussed, affects Africa and the information presented below is not likely
to be covered in the US media.
dm
-----Original Message-----
March 21, 2002
Granma International
In Monterrey, Fidel urges an end to conditions for development funding
MONTERREY, Mexico.- President Fidel Castro stated today Thursday that
allocating funds for nations’ development should be carried out with the
democratic support of all, and without sacrificing any countries’
independence and sovereignty.
When speaking at the International Conference on Development Financing, the
Cuban leader commented that resources for providing direct help to countries
should be in the hands of the United Nations, and not disastrous
institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He considered that the forum’s planned resolution, called the Monterrey
Consensus, should not be imposed at the conference by the world’s masters,
thus delegating us to humiliating, conditional and interfering charity.
Fidel Castro affirmed that the rich world should forgive foreign debts and
offer new, soft loans for development financing, while traditional offers of
aid, always miserly and very often ridiculous, are insufficient or not
fulfilled.
In that regard, he urged that all the international finance organizations
that had been created since the Bretton Woods Conference until today, should
be rethought.
The Cuban president highlighted that in the face of the current serious
crisis, we are being offered an even worse future, where an increasingly
ungovernable world’s economic, social and ecological tragedy will never be
solved, where poverty and hunger increase daily, as if a large part of
humanity were superfluous.
This is the time for politicians and state leaders to reflect calmly,
suggested Fidel.
He called the current world economic order a system of plunder and
exploitation, the like of which history has never seen before, and which has
led to the underdevelopment of 75% of the world’s inhabitants.
Every day people believe less and less in statements and promises, and the
prestige of international financial institutions has dropped to below zero.
Cuba’s president referred to the world economy as a gigantic casino, when
explaining that according to recent analysis, for every dollar used in world
commerce more than $100 USD are used in speculative ventures that have
nothing to do with the real economy.
He also pointed out that 1.2 billion persons now live in extreme poverty in
Third World nations, while the abyss is growing, not getting smaller. In
1969, rich countries had 37 times more income than poor nations; the figure
currently stands at 74.
He indicated that we have reached such extremes that the world’s three
richest persons possess assets equivalent to the combined GDP of the 48
poorest countries, while in 2001, the number of hungry people was 826
million.
Currently, there are 854 million illiterate adults, 325 million children who
do not attend school, two billion persons who lack essential low-cost
medicine, 2.4 billion who have no basic sanitary conditions. At least 11
million under five’s die every year from preventable causes and 500,000 go
incurably blind due to a lack of vitamin A.
He stressed that the inhabitants of developed countries live 30 years longer
than sub-Saharan African people, calling that true genocide.
Fidel stated that poor nations should not be blamed for the tragedy, because
they had not conquered or looted entire continents for centuries, nor
established colonialism, nor re-introduced slavery or created modern
imperialism. They are its victims.
The main responsibility for financing development belongs to those states
which today, for obvious historical reasons, enjoy the benefits of such
atrocities.
Thus he proposed that the rich world should forgive foreign debts and gives
new, soft loans to finance development.
The belief that the economic and social order that has shown itself to be
unsustainable could be imposed by force is a crazy idea, he emphasized when
calling on humanity to say a farewell to arms once and for all, as something
has to be done to save the human race, and that a better world is possible.
During his six-minute speech, the Cuban president received several rounds of
applause.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Cuba's Castro attacks West on poverty at UN summit.
By Kieran Murray
MONTERREY, Mexico, March 21 (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro on
Thursday ridiculed efforts by rich nations to reduce global poverty, saying
they were masters of a "genocidal" economic system that condemns billions to
misery and deprivation.
In a brief visit to a major U.N. aid summit, Castro said the West now lorded
over the rest of the world because it had plundered entire continents during
centuries of colonial rule.
"The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and
exploitation like no other in history," a combative Castro said in an
unusually short speech.
The communist leader then excused himself before the more than 50 heads of
state present, saying he had to return to Cuba immediately because of a
"special situation" there. He gave no details.
His rapid departure meant he would not cross paths with U.S. President
George W. Bush, due to arrive at the summit in Mexico's northern city of
Monterrey later on Thursday.
Castro arrived in Monterrey on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after
confirming he would take part in the summit, which is aimed at boosting aid
flows to poor nations in order to slash poverty levels across the world.
Castro dismissed the summit's draft action plan, saying it was imposed by
the "masters of the world" who simply want poor nations to "accept
humiliating, conditioned and interfering handouts."
"The world economy today is a huge casino," he said, reeling off a list of
statistics showing the dramatic concentration of wealth in the developed
world while hundreds of millions of starving people lacked even basic
medical and social services.
"The life span of the population in the developed world is 30 years higher
than that of people living in sub-Saharan Africa. A true genocide!" Castro
said, dressed in his familiar olive green fatigues.
He called on developed nations to condone the foreign debt of all poor
nations and open up hefty new lines of credit to finance their development.
"As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the
arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the
ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illness,
poverty or hunger," Castro said.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Summit braces for Castro U.S. foreign aid focus of event
The Miami Herald - Thu, Mar. 21, 2002 - BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
MONTERREY, Mexico - The expected arrival Wednesday of President Fidel Castro
of Cuba for a United Nations summit on poverty is prompting worries among
organizers that he will rob the limelight from President Bush's promise of
major increases in U.S. foreign aid.
Cuba communicated Castro's last-minute decision to attend the summit to
President Vicente Fox of Mexico at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Expressing their
concern, Mexican, U.S. and European officials said privately they fear
Castro's anti-globalization rhetoric will draw attention from a
groundbreaking final document expected to be signed by the United States,
Europe and virtually all developing countries.
Latin American officials were especially worried that Castro may want to
participate in Friday's closed-door retreat for Bush and dozens of other
heads of state to discuss the war on poverty.
''If Castro goes, Bush won't go, and the meeting will be worthless,'' said a
Latin American official involved in the summit's organization.
But Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said Wednesday that Castro
would address the summit in the morning session of today's meeting, and that
the Cuban leader's visit to Monterrey was expected to be ''for a very brief
period.'' Bush is expected to arrive this afternoon.
NOT TOGETHER
Castañeda's words were interpreted by Latin American officials as a Mexican
hope that Castro will be gone by midday, before Bush's arrival, and that the
two leaders will not be in the same room at any time.
''Castro will have it both ways: He will grab the headlines from the world,
and he will do Fox a favor in not requesting to be invited along with
everybody else to the closed-door retreat,'' one Latin American official
said. ``It will be his way of telling Fox, ``You owe me one.''
Relations between Cuba and Mexico have been tense since an incident last
month in which 21 Cubans broke into the Mexican Embassy in Havana,
presumably in an effort to leave the country, and were evicted by Cuban
police at Mexico's request.
Mexican officials first blamed Miami Cuban exiles for instigating the
would-be refugees' action, but later said privately that the Castro regime
might have encouraged the embassy takeover as a subtle punishment for
Mexico's policy of supporting human rights activists on the island.
Asked whether Castro would meet with Fox, Castañeda told reporters, ``We
still don't have the exact arrival and departure times of President Castro,
so we don't know.''
FINAL DOCUMENT
Even if Castro leaves before Bush's arrival, his likely statements
criticizing U.S.-backed free-market policies are expected to take some of
the glitter away from what U.S. and United Nations officials are calling a
groundbreaking final document entitled ``The Monterrey Consensus.''
Breaking with decades of sterile arguments in which poor countries demanded
more aid from richer nations, the U.S.-backed document sets new ground rules
under which poor countries will adopt free-market policies, respect human
rights and fight corruption in exchange for greater financial assistance
from rich countries.
As a show of support for the new agreement, the Bush administration has
announced a 50 percent increase in U.S. foreign aid by 2006. The United
States now spends about $10 billion a year in foreign assistance, and is the
least generous donor relative to its economy among rich nations.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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