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Bush Trip Will Focus on Free Trade in Americas

Posted on: Friday, 4 November 2005, 06:00 CST

By Richard Benedetto

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina -- President Bush began a five-day trip to Argentina, Brazil and Panama Thursday in which he will argue that free trade in the hemisphere would help his South and Central American counterparts create jobs and reduce poverty.

Bush and 31 other leaders will attend a two-day Summit of the Americas here today and Saturday before he meets with the leaders of Brazil and Panama. He returns to Washington on Monday.

Bush, who arrived here Thursday, wants to discuss the possibility of reviving talks on a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would create a hemisphere-wide "free-trade zone" in countries with high poverty rates. Bush said this week that loosening trade restrictions was the best way to lift people out of poverty.

Protesters, driven by opposition to globalization and the Iraq war, were preparing to demonstrate against Bush in all three countries.

"We are going to fight against all forms of imperialism," said Santiago Zamora, a 30-year-old biology student in a Che Guevara shirt.

And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a leftist who has allied himself with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, said he will sink the treaty.

"I'm sure it will be a historic event because it's the final burial," of the treaty, Chavez said on Venezuelan television. "Socialism builds and capitalism destroys."

The Bush administration brushed off the criticisms of Chavez, who has recently said he was considering building a nuclear power reactor.

"A lot of people recognize that it would be problematic for Chavez to be in the nuclear business," Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said Wednesday in a pre-trip briefing of reporters.

But Hadley said the summit is not about Chavez.

"The purpose of the summit is for democratically elected leaders to get together and reaffirm the fact that there is really a shared vision for the hemisphere that is based on democracy and free markets and free trade."

In an interview Tuesday with Latin American reporters, Bush said he hoped the summit would help Latin America progress.

"I will say to the people, the leadership ... that our markets are open, so long as you open your markets," Bush said. "The message is one of jobs and democracy and honesty and open government."

Bush acknowledged that the effort to create a free-trade zone throughout the Americas is "stalled." He plans to focus on broader ongoing talks aimed at expanding global free trade. He said he would use the meetings to urge more cooperation in the talks from Latin American nations, particularly on agricultural products.

Bush travels to the region at a time when many governments are faced with weak economies and rising poverty, which are testing their fragile democracies.

Emily Edmonds-Poli, a Latin America scholar at the University of San Diego, says many Latin Americans feel that Bush has shoved them aside since Sept. 11, 2001.

"This summit is not likely to bring about anything concrete," she says. "But it is a chance for Bush to remind the people and leaders of the region that the U.S. is still around, still cares and still has a major role to play in their future."

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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