 |
LATIN AMERICA |
| |
ALBA Strengthens Trade Alliance, Ratifies
Struggle Against the “Empire”
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia – The 7th Summit of the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or
ALBA, approved Saturday new steps for
strengthening its model of “just and
complementary trade” and ratified its
struggle against “threats from the empire,”
as the group calls the United States.
The decisions were taken at a meeting in the
Bolivian city of Cochabamba attended by
Latin American presidents Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Daniel
Ortega of Nicaragua and the vice president
of Cuba, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura.
Also taking part were Patricia Rodas,
foreign minister of ousted Honduran
President Manuel Zelaya, and the Caribbean
prime ministers Ralph Gonsalves of Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica’s
Roosevelt Skerrit, and Baldwin Spencer of
Antigua and Barbuda.
The treaty for a Unified Regional
Compensation System, or SUCRE, was the most
important economic measure approved at the
presidential meeting.
Its goal is to endow ALBA countries with
“monetary and financial sovereignty” and
calls for “the elimination of the U.S.
dollar in regional trade.”
This is a first step, official sources said,
towards the future creation of a common
currency that Morales suggested be called
the pacha, which means “land” in the Quechua
Indian tongue.
They also agreed on principles that would
allow the nine ALBA countries to develop a
Peoples’ Trade Treaty, or TCP, an initiative
that calls for “fair, complementary and
mutually supportive” trade so that nations
of the bloc can overcome their economic
inequalities.
ALBA will also found the ALBAEXIM trade
corporation for exports and imports, as a
mechanism for balancing commerce and which
will open stores in the different countries
for their products.
In the political arena, Chavez said at the
end of the meeting that the bloc is
progressing towards the “exorcism of
imperial doctrine” in their countries in
order to “recover the liberating doctrine of
Bolivar.”
In this area, the chief resolution was for
ALBA to impose new trade and migratory
sanctions on the government of Roberto
Micheletti in Honduras, where the bloc
demands the unconditional reinstatement of
deposed President Manuel Zelaya.
The regional group also asked the Colombian
government in its final statement “to
reconsider the installation” of U.S.
military bases and demanded that the
territory occupied by the United States at
Guantanamo be returned to Cuba.
ALBA reaffirmed its request that the U.S.
economic, trade and financial embargo
against Cuba end “unconditionally,
unilaterally and immediately.”
The declaration of the 7th summit proposes
the founding of a “Permanent Committee for
the Sovereignty and Defense of the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
America ALBA-TCP,” except for the islands,
which belong to a “regional security system
made up of countries of the eastern
Caribbean.”
That committee has as its chief objectives
the definition of a “combined strategy for
comprehensive popular defense and the
founding of a School for the Dignity and
Sovereignty of the Armed Forces of the
ALBA-TCP nations.”
In the statement, the countries of the group
accuse “imperialism and rightist forces” in
the region of having reacted “with the coup
d’etat in Honduras and the installation of
military bases in Colombia” to impede “the
progress and growth of progressive forces
and ideas in Latin America and the
Caribbean.”
During the meeting, Chavez insisted that a
“defensive military alliance” be created to
face “threats from the empire.”
“Why not? Who can stop sovereign nations
from forming a defensive military alliance
and exchanging soldiers and officers and
training and materiel and logistics?” Chavez
asked.
On the subject of the environment, the
Boliviarians decided that next December they
will take a jointly agreed position to the
summit on climate change in Copenhagen.
ALBA agreed as a novelty to study the
creation of an International Climate Court
to make “industrialized countries pay their
climatic debt and effectively reduce their
domestic hothouse-gas emissions.”
The bloc will promote within the framework
of the United Nations a Universal
Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth to
seek her preservation against the
“wastefulness of the capitalist system.”
Morales proposed Saturday to his colleagues
that, after their next summit scheduled for
Dec. 13-14 in Cuba, they all travel together
to Denmark to attend the climate change
conference. |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
