By Gilles Trequesser
MARGARITA ISLAND, Venezuela, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Leaders from 19 Latin American countries plus Spain and Portugal gather on Friday to debate democratic values, with calls for more political freedom in Cuba likely to dominate, diplomats said.
Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera will play host on the Caribbean island tourist resort of Margarita to a two-day gathering of high-profile leaders including Cuba's Fidel Castro, Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Argentina's Carlos Menem.
The Seventh Ibero-American Summit's official theme -- "The Ethical Values of Democracy'' -- sounded unlikely to grab world headlines and has not captivated the Venezuelan public, even if it looked like an improvement on last year's "Governability in an Efficient and Participative Democracy'' debated in Chile.
But diplomats said the Cuban issue could draw interest, with Castro as usual monopolizing media attention even before he arrived for his first visit to Venezuela since 1989.
Earlier this week, police expelled from the island eight Cuban exiles planning to protest Castro's 38-year-old communist rule. The Venezuelan government later deplored the move and said the expulsions were a mistake.
Tight security was clamped on the island of 350,000 residents and although Venezuelan authorities refused to admit it publicly, there was concern about the Cuban leader's safety after reports last week of a plot to kill him at the meeting.
Thursday morning, a bomb squad blew up a car feared to contain a bomb that was parked in front of the seaside luxury hotel where the summit will be held. Police later said it was a false alarm.
Diplomatic sources said some delegations -- including Argentina and Nicaragua -- wanted the summit's 20-page final statement, dubbed the Declaration of Margarita, to contain a clear call for Cuba's one-party system to introduce democratic reforms and respect human rights.
Such a public condemnation of Cuba by its regional peers would be unprecedented since the Ibero-American meetings began in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1991. It would also be a first at Latin American level since Cuba was suspended from the Organization of American States in 1962.
"But, as in previous opportunities, we're unlikely to go beyond a general commitment, with no country mentioned by name,'' said a Brazilian diplomat familiar with the draft statement.
Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said his country welcomed any debate on democracy, which he called "people's power'' and something that he said began in Cuba with the 1959 revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
"But one should talk really about what democracy means ... and that includes non-corrupt governments, on which Cuba holds a prestigiously clean record,'' he told reporters on Thursday at his arrival at the airport.
Another issue likely to dominate the debates was Caldera's proposal regarding the "Right to Truthful Information,'' a move critics said was tantamount to media censorship.
The controversial proposal has sparked heavy criticism from media executives and journalists in the region, who saw it as an attempt to shackle the press.
Caldera, during the inauguration of the high-tech press center built for the event, insisted on Thursday the outcry was much ado about nothing and that the proposal was not a regulatory measure.
"I have said a thousand times that I'm not going to propose any law or any coercive measure but nobody can make me change my deep conviction that one of the ethical values for a firm democracy is that the information be truthful,'' he said.
All the leaders, with the exception of Ecuador's President Fabian Alarcon, who cancelled his trip to attend pressing domestic affairs, were expected to arrive on Friday with the summit formally getting under way on Saturday morning.
00:22 11-07-97