by Marcelo Cajueiro
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago, April 18 (Xinhua)
-- With at least four heads of state critical of the draft declaration of the
Fifth Summit of the Americas, it is still unclear whether all 34 participant
countries will sign the document and whether its text will remain unchanged.
Among the strongest critics of the draft declaration
are Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega, and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
The four countries are members of the Bolivarian
Alternative for the People of Our America, an international cooperation
organization proposed by Chavez as an alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Shortly before the summit, the four heads of state
criticized the draft, the result of one and a half years of negotiations, that
it does not address the necessary measures to curb the effects of the global
financial crisis on the developing countries in the Americas -- a crisis which
they blame on the United States.
The most common explanation for the absence of
specific clauses dealing with the crisis is that the draft was mostly negotiated
before the crisis deepened in September and October last year.
The draft focuses on promoting human prosperity,
energy security, environmental sustainability, public security and democratic
governance.
On Saturday, Morales added in a press conference
another criticism to the draft's text: "If the issue of biofuel is not reviewed,
the government of Bolivia will not sign this document. Introducing biofuel
policies means to privilege the machines over human life. What will we pick,
human life or U.S. machines?"
Morales did not elaborate on the reasons for his
opposition to pro-biofuel policies, but critics of sugarcane ethanol, the most
common type of biofull, argue the expansion of crops of sugarcane will reduce
the land available for the production of food.
The three-day summit opened in Port of Spain on
Friday.¡¡
