- REUTERS
Cuban President Fidel Castro (right), welcomes his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales at Havana's Jose Marti airport on Thursday ahead of a meeting between Castro, Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the weekend in Havana to sign a 'People's Trade Treaty' to counter free-trade deals Washington is seeking with some Latin American countries.
HAVANA (AP):
THE LEFTIST presidents of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela endorsed their own pact for regional commerce and cooperation on Saturday in hopes of creating a political counterweight to United States influence in Latin America.
The gathering is part of a rapidly deepening political and economic alliance among communist Cuba's Fidel Castro and left-leaning Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, who are working out their own idea for regional integration without U.S. control.
Morales' decision to sign the pact, joining Venezuela and Cuba in the year-old Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas Saturday afternoon was a victory for Chavez and Castro in their push to increase their political influence in the region.
Their efforts include oil-producing Venezuela's cut-rate petroleum deals for Caribbean nations, Cuba's literacy efforts in South America and their programme to bring free eye operations to needy people around the hemisphere.
A POLITICAL STATEMENT
The Bolivarian pact, known as ALBA, is largely a political statement that acts as a mechanism for regional trade and cooperation efforts. But its results have also been economic, with Venezuela-Cuba trade expected to reach more than $3.5 billion this year - about 40 per cent richer than in 2005.
In announcing plans for the pact in December 2004, Castro and Chavez said ALBA would not be subject to mercantile criteria or the egotistical interests of commerce and nations that hurt people.
Provisions include trade of some products with zero tariffs and preferential treatment for ships and airplanes within each other's territory.
The first version of ALBA signed last year also included numerous bilateral agreements specific to Cuba and Venezuela, such as the 90,000 barrels of crude petroleum that oil-producing Venezuela sends to the communist-run island daily.
The alternative agreement "is a clever mixture of politics and economics, weighted toward the politics," said Gary Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.
"Castro is willing to open the Cuban market at the margins, but not in the core, and for that reason the economic contribution of (the pact), through enhanced trade and investment, will be limited," Hufbauer said. "But the political symbolism of associated social programmes, financed by Venezuelan oil revenues, is terrific."
