APRIL 19, 1999
By Andrew Cawthorne
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, April 17 (Reuters) - Venezuela's paratrooper-turned-president Hugo Chavez challenged Caribbean leaders ending a summit Saturday to turn words into action and improve the lot of their impoverished citizens.
"We go from summit to summit, but our peoples go from abyss to abyss," Chavez told more than 20 heads of state, including his fellow Latin American "revolutionary" Fidel Castro, at a ceremony to close the two-day Association of Caribbean States (ACS) meeting in Santo Domingo.
"We pray to God that ... the next century be one of light and peace," he said, saying the region's people were in the grip of "terrible under-development".
Chavez, 44, who won the presidency through elections last December after a failed military coup attempt in 1994, said he had attended six summits since taking office in February.
Nevertheless, he announced he would himself host a summit next year to honor Latin America's 18th century independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Excusing himself as a "novice" and a dreamer, Chavez presented a vision of a united continent with full political integration and "a vast Congress of the Americas" based in Panama.
The Venezuelan leader's performance at the summit, where he has courted media attention since landing Friday in Santo Domingo, contrasted strongly with the deliberately low-key presence of Castro.
The normally loquacious and charismatic Castro -- who is celebrating four decades in power since his 1959 revolution -- has not uttered a word in public despite huge media interest in his every move. Castro, 72, was the only leader not to participate in an end-of-summit news conference.
He did address the ACS meeting behind closed doors for 40 minutes Saturday, but that speech was not made public.
Analysts and diplomats in Santo Domingo said the Cuban leader had clearly decided to avoid deflecting attention from other heads of state, or the summit agenda, as often happens at foreign meetings he attends.
"Fidel Castro, the old revolutionary, stepped aside, and Hugo Chavez, the young revolutionary, gleefully filled his space," said one Latin American diplomat here.
At Saturday's news conference, El Salvador's President Armando Calderon Sol said he had pleaded with Castro for clemency in the case of two Salvadoran men recently convicted of terrorism and condemned to death in Havana.
"He (Castro) offered to have a lot of fairness, responsibility and objectivity in the case," Calderon said.
The ACS heads of state signed at the summit's end the Declaration of Santo Domingo which pledged greater commercial and political unity into the 21st century.
Among the most important elements were an agreement to cooperate better against natural disasters such as hurricanes Mitch and Georges, which took thousands of lives and set economies back years throughout the region in 1998.
The ACS declaration also protested Western nations' use of the Caribbean sea to transport nuclear and toxic waste, and condemned the U.S. economic embargo on communist-run Cuba.
One of the ACS' chief long-term aims is to create among its 25 member states what would be the world's fourth-largest trading bloc, consisting of 200 million people and a combined gross domestic product of $500 billion.
The ACS leaders also expressed hope of further developing the region's growing tourism industry and fledgling financial sectors as a counter-balance to its reliance on low-priced basic goods such as sugar and bananas.
Security was strict at the summit, with gunboats opposite the plush sea-front hotel where the presidents were staying, helicopters overhead, and gun-toting soldiers on every corner.
22:05 04-17-99
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited
[ BACK TO THE NEWS ]