"The way in which the United States uses its money and power in this part of the world still makes some of its allies angry." 

*************



----- Original Message ----- 
From: P'loreng'a Neko-yat 
To: [log in to unmask] ; [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 7:20 PM
Subject: re:Bush Meets Skepticism on Free Trade at Americas Conference


Bush Meets Skepticism on Free Trade at Americas Conference

January 14, 2004
By TIM WEINER 





MONTERREY, Mexico, Jan. 13 - President Bush spent hours
here during the past two days at the Summit of the Americas
mending fences with his neighbors, Mexico and Canada. But
he left the leaders of some other countries feeling shut
out. 

The way in which the United States uses its money and power
in this part of the world still makes some of its allies
angry. 

The past decade of free trade involving the United States,
Canada and Mexico was "a decade of desperation" for their
neighbors to the south, who live with "the awful reality of
widespread and disgracefully increasing poverty," President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said Tuesday. 

The meeting of 34 Western Hemisphere nations was supposed
to seek ways to help tens of millions of poor people in the
region. For Mr. Bush, that meant ! more trade. 

On Tuesday morning he said, "Trade is the most certain path
to lasting prosperity." On Monday night he said, "The best
way to eradicate poverty is to encourage trade between
nations." 

Many leaders of the nations at this conference disagree.
Having had wrenching experiences with free market economies
and forces like the World Bank, they say nations do not
live by trade alone. 

The president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, signed a free trade
agreement with the United States; it took effect on Jan. 1.
He is politically moderate, leaning a little to the left,
and his country has one of the region's strongest
economies. 

Yet Mr. Lagos spoke plainly of economic injustice and
poverty and of the great divide throughout the hemisphere
between rich and poor. "This isn't the poorest continent" -
that would be Africa - "but it might be one of the most
unjust," he said. 

Another skeptic about trade might be ! the Argentine
president, Nestor Kirchner, who took office in May in the
swirl of an economic crisis that has left millions
unemployed. 

"Not just any free trade accord will work," he said.
"Signing one will not be any easy or direct path to
prosperity." 

"A free trade accord cannot be the sole road in a single
direction," he said. "A pact that does nothing to resolve
deep existing imbalances will do nothing but deepen
injustice and the breakdown of our economies." 

The main issues for the Americas, Mr. da Silva said, are
"the fight against hunger, poverty and social exclusion,"
not expanding the borders of free trade agreements. 

Even the World Bank's leaders do not fully agree with Mr.
Bush. 

"Free trade definitely brings new economic opportunities,"
David de Ferranti, a World Bank vice president for Latin
America and the Caribbean, said in a report on the North
American Free Trade Agreement and its implications for a
Free Trade Area of the Americas, the hemispheric pact Mr.
Bush seeks with the nations gathered here. "But the lessons
from Nafta for other countries negotiating with the U.S.
are that free trade alone is not enough without significant
policy and institutional reforms," the report said. 

Those reforms, especially ways to create economic
opportunity for poor people without access to the global
mall - international trade, commercial credit, computers,
cellphones, shopping centers - were supposed to be the
subject here. 

In the end, the leaders produced a largely boilerplate
declaration little different from the one they signed in
2001, at the last such meeting. President James Patterson
of Jamaica publicly asked that it not be dismissed as
"another pious statement of intent." 

The declaration did not give the United States precisely
what it sought. Washington wanted a deadline of 2005 for
the ! Free Trade Area of the Americas. The declaration does
not set a firm date. Nor does it ban "corrupt" governments
from those meetings, as the United States wanted. Nor does
it adopt Mr. Bush's thinking that trade is the best, most
certain path to prosperity. 

The populations of the United States, Canada and Mexico
together represent about half the 800 million people who
live in the 34 nations represented at the conference. The
discussion was supposed to be largely about how the other
half lives. Perhaps 200 million or more are surviving on a
dollar or two a day. Their numbers are increasing. 

Mr. Bush's hand in steering the discussion toward free
trade was seen as overreaching by some Latin American
leaders. 

With many millions of landless peasants, they are less
interested than Mr. Bush in issues like how to "strengthen
property rights so that land can be leveraged as a source
of capital," as Mr. Bush said. For natio! ns without land
registries or functioning legal systems, those are faraway
goals. 

As the summit meeting closed on Tuesday night, the
consensus seemed to be that President Bush and the leaders
critical of his policies had failed to find much common
ground or a common language. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/international/americas/14LATI.html?ex=1075095265&ei=1&en=799805b893a80912






ILUPCY - International League of UPC Youths.

The "Third Liberation of Uganda; Common sense revolution"

"It is common sense that Museveni is a brutal dictator, it is a common sense that human rights records are so adverse in Uganda. It is a common sense that Ugandans are eager for change, no matter what the means are. We shall commit our selves to holding the light. This is our commitment, our obligations as young people bound to defend a generation from waste!". Neko-yat P'loreng'a.



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