MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A step further back

With the start of the Iraq war Latinamerica fell back another step in the priority list of the United States, a tendency that unexpectedly irrupted when the September 11 attacks in spite of the President George Bush administration promise that this would become the “century of the Americas”.

The Iraq conflict worsened the situation since the majority of Latinamerican countries are opposed to the war unless it has United Nations support. And this is particularly negative for Mexico and Chile who openly refused as non permanent members of the Security Council to support Washington in its crusade to disarm Iraq by force.

"War will mean a further fall in the Bush administration interest towards hemispheric issues and policies, which were already alarmingly low, in spite of the complicated financial and social situation in the region", writes Robert Gelbard a former US Under- Secretary for the Americas in the Interamerican Dialogue newsletter.

The region actually has no one in Mr. Gelbard's former post since the naming of US Ambassador Roger Noriega has yet to be considered by Congress.

With the coming of President Bush, a former Texas governor and fluent in Spanish, and President Vicente Fox in Mexico, a former multinational executive trained in the US, it was expected that Washington would finally look down to its backyard and push ahead with the Free Trade of the Americas Association, a project to create a free trade area extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

President Fox in his presidential campaign had also anticipated a migration agreement with the United States to help the three million undocumented Mexicans working north of the Rio Bravo, but September 11 shattered the project and the political future of his Foreign Affairs Secretary, Jorge Castañeda who was forced to resign.

With public opinion against the war, and the deterioration of relations with Washington, Mr. Fox finally decided not to support the US in its decision to forcibly disarm Iraq.

According to Arturo Valenzuela, head of Latinamerican affairs in the Clinton administration, Chile after three long years of negotiations signed a free trade agreement with the United States that still has to be ratified by Congress and could be exposed to a retaliatory suspension given the country's decision not to accompany President Bush' decision in United Nations.

However Mr. Valenzuela believes that the situation with Mexico given the complexity of bilateral relations and the 2,000 miles common border could soon become restored.

Mr. Valenzuela and Mr. Gelbard agree that the moral standing and credibility of United States in Latinamerica will suffer because of the Iraq intervention without United Nations support.