Pres. Obama attending The 5TH Summit of the Americas, April 17-19th

THE last time the heads of government of the Americas got together, at the Argentine resort of Mar del Plata in November 2005, it was a fiasco. At a protest rally of 25,000 organised with the help of the hosts, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez spent more than two hours denouncing the United States and its plans for a Free-Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). At the meeting itself, 29 countries backed the trade plan, moribund though it was, and Mexico’s president gave Mr Chávez a public earwigging. George Bush and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left early and Argentina and Uruguay were not on speaking terms.

So the first aim of many of the 34 leaders who are due to assemble in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, between April 17th and 19th, is to preserve the diplomatic niceties and create a better atmosphere in the Americas. In this they may well succeed. For the region’s political landscape has changed. Most obviously, the United States now has in Barack Obama a president who is as widely admired in Latin America as Mr Bush was disliked. Mr Chávez is on the defensive, his socialist economy wounded as badly as any other by the world recession. The most divisive issue concerns the one country that is not invited. Latin America is now united in wanting to end the diplomatic isolation of Cuba, and many would like the United States to lift its long-standing economic embargo against the island.
http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13446630

OBAMA’s AGENDA FOR CHANGE AND THE 2009 SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

Rick Arnold and Manuel Pérez-Rocha

Barack Obama's electoral victory represents hope for a change in direction for US relations with Latin America and within the North American region- a change that departs from the Monroe Doctrine of US superiority over its 'backyard' neighbors. North American pundits have already been suggesting that a new US administration must focus its energies on the current economic crisis along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - leaving no time to deliver on other campaign promises such as putting into practice a new ‘good neighbor' policy in the Americas and re-visiting existing and pending free trade agreements.

The pundits may not be giving the 44th President and his team enough credit when it comes to their ability to multi-task. With expectations so high, Obama will need to move on various fronts simultaneously to be seen to be working at fulfilling the hopes that have been raised. These next few months will be important ones to be able to demonstrate to all the other countries in the American continent -,from Canada to Argentina- that the US is turning its back on the continental ill will generated by the Bush administration. . In its place Obama will want to communicate that the US has a new vision for this hemisphere, one that is based on equality, respect and understanding. The new administration will be up against a deadline to showcase this new policy direction when the Heads-of State from all the countries in the hemisphere are present at the V Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad and Tobago on April 17-19, 2009.
http://www.art-us.org/node/392