MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Preparing for the big November summit

Foreign Affairs ministers from the Group of Rio, G-Rio, will be discussing this week in Buenos Aires actions to help stabilize the situation in Haiti and the agenda of the coming Summit of the Americas, scheduled for next November and with the participation of United States president George Bush.

G-Rio was created in the early eighties and currently includes 18 Latinamerican and Caribbean Community countries, and is basically a regionally influential consulting and political harmonization mechanism.

G-Rio ministers are scheduled to meet July 22 in Pilar, Argentina, a quiet middle class area in the outskirts of Buenos Aires far from the picketers that daily scourge the Argentine capital, where they will address the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Haiti and the lack of promised financial support, plus innovative financial tools to help boost long term sustainable development in Latinamerica and the Caribbean.

Another issue for the Pilar meeting is the XIX G-Rio leaders' summit to be held next August 25/26 in the winter Patagonia resort of Bariloche, which will also try to harmonize the group's regional stance regarding the November Americas IV summit when president Bush will be present, a major security and political challenge for host Argentina.

Latinamerican and Caribbean countries want the Americas summit to address such pressing issues as regional poverty and unemployment following recent G-Rio proposals for a more flexible fiscal accounting policy, which could help invest more resources in development and infrastructure.

G-Rio has also requested that the Bush administration pay more attention to hemispheric affairs that among other things has cooled the Free Trade Association of the Americas initiative, (extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego), an increasingly controversial issue in the region that has given space to other proposals. Brazil has been advancing in the vacuum left by Washington with its own commercial and trade integration initiatives and the project of a Community of South American nations has began to grow sponsored by Mercosur and the Andean nations community.

Furthermore in the recent Organization of American States annual assembly held in Fort Lauderdale a numerous group of countries proposed alternatives to a much cherished US initiative to "monitor" democracy in the Americas.

The Americas summit is scheduled for November 4/5 in Mar del Plata where undoubtedly President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will have quite a task if they wish to regain the political initiative in the region, clearly a Bush administration instrument to keep track of volatile situations in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua where democracy and governance are considered at risk.

For Argentina and President Kirchner's administration the occasion will be a great challenge coming just two weeks after mid term elections with the leadership of the ruling party split and ferociously disputing turf, plus the picketers phenomena, a daily affair in Buenos Aires which seems to prosper under the tolerance or even benevolence of the Argentine political system.

US Embassy authorities in Buenos Aires officially denied concern about these issues but reliable sources insist the Bush administration wants "no surprises" or distracting events next November.

According to the Buenos Aires press Foreign Affairs minister Rafael Bielsa instructed Argentine Ambassador in Washington Jose Bordon and OAS Ambassador Rodolfo Gil to ratify before the White House that the Mar del Plata agenda remains "inalterable" meaning that the agenda will address the issue of "creating jobs to fight poverty and strengthen democratic governance".