Two American agendas?

Anthony Wilson
Trinidad Guardian
April 1, 2009

A top representative of an American think tank which focuses on the Western Hemisphere has raised the possibility that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may use this month's Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain to further his agenda of building an anti-United States bloc of countries in the region. Vice President of the Council of the Americas, Eric Farnsworth, put forward this possibility yesterday at a briefing for journalists from nine Latin American and Caribbean countries who were invited by the US State Department to participate in a pre-Summit reporting tour of Washington DC.

Farnsworth noted that the Declaration of Miami at the end of the first Summit of Americas in 1994, which dealt with health, education and energy sector reforms, was agreed by consensus. Had the agenda at the first Summit been implemented, Farnsworth argued, there would not have been the divisions in the hemisphere that exist now. And he pointed out that the last Summit of the Americas, which was held in Mar del Plata in Argentina, ended with the hemispheric divisions more stark than ever.
The fact that this is the first summit since Mar del Plata means that many in the US do not know what's going to happen, Farnsworth said.

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