Hemispheric Meeting against FTAA Debates on Foreign Debt
Havana (Prensa Latina) Representatives of different progressive forces and social movements debated Saturday on the 20 years of struggle against external debt, in the last day of the 4th Hemispheric Meeting for Fighting against FTAA.
The Saturday agenda included an analysis of the process of privatization of natural resources and basic services and a great panel, called "In Defense of Mankind."
More than 960 delegates of the forum let known a call to the 3rd Summit of the Peoples and presented a plan for action to beat the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
During four days, strong denouncing and criticism to FTAA was seen in the event.
Negotiations for the approval and implantation of FTAA are stopped because of popular protesting demonstrations and activities, rejection of legislators and even US commercial producers.
This situation has led Washington to use fostering of bilateral agreements for free trade.
The meeting, which ends Saturday, dedicated a special session to the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) presided by Presidents of Cuba, Fidel Castro Ruz, and Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, respectively. Both Presidents highlighted the course of this integration project, which has already 49 new collaboration agreements between Cuba and Venezuela, in public health, education, energy, transport, civil aircraft and sports, among others.
The celebration of the first meeting between Cuban and Venezuelan entrepreneurs to foster ALBA, and an exhibit of Venezuelan products was quite important for the signing of these agreements.
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Chavez states ALBA will be the only one to make possible cooperation and integration programs for Latin American and Caribbean peoples, because of its deep social, economic, political and ideological content.
He also pointed out that differently from FTAA, ALBA is not designed to destroy and condemn, but a relation between brothers, with a great wish to help each other.
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ALBA Is a Liberating Proposal, Says Hugo Chavez
Havana(Prensa Latina) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez highlighted that the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is a liberating proposal to cut the chains of underdevelopment and give a way to regional integration.
In a special session of the 4th Hemispheric Meeting for Fighting against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) dedicated to the project approved by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba in December 2004, Chavez said on Friday ALBA is quite far from the capitalist cruelty.
He remembered the FTAA annexationist purposes, which were approved by 31 Heads of State in the Summit of the Americas in the Canadian city of Quebec, and that only Cuba, which was absent, and Venezuela, because of its imprudence, as said by Chavez himself, did not accept such a freak.
Although the aspiration was to start it on January 1, 2005, it could not be implanted because of the strength of social movements and the awake of the Latin American peoples.
Chavez, leader of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution, said a greater alternative is already going on, as showed with the 49 collaboration agreements signed with Cuba Friday.
He was thankful for the Cuban medical cooperation in Venezuelan fields and cities, the attention to more than 10,000 patients in Cuban hospitals and medical institutions, and informed that Venezuela and Cuba agreed to give medical attention to 100,000 people starting from the second semester of 2005, for which financial resources in transport, food and life conditions will be destined.
He informed that an enterprise called PETROSUR will be created to ease the region"s energy needs, something similar to the Caracas Energy Convention, in which countries like Cuba, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are benefited, in order to reduce costs for fuel processing and transport.
He added that the opening of offices of the Venezuelan Industrial Bank in countries which would like to accept such links would be another solution.
"Only ALBA will make those cooperation and integration programs possible for the happiness of the Latin American peoples, an alternative now growing with concrete actions," he emphasized.
Chavez said that is the way the intuition of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva to make the 21st Century the one for Latin America and the Caribbean.
"The finish line seems impossible, but let"s go for it. These times are for boldness and daring, to make the world a better world," he concluded.
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