OAS closing statement omits US proposal to strengthen democracy

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050608/pl_afp/oassummitus_050608090320;_ylt=AgyO8TkS_4m7IMWbU_k731CsOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

FORT LAUDERDALE, United States (AFP) - The 34-member Organization of American States omitted a US proposal on strengthening democracy in Latin America from the closing statement of its three-day summit.


The unanimously approved statement instead tasked OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza to draw up proposals to "address situations" likely to compromise the "democratic political process or the rule of law" in the region.

Insulza's proposals, the statement added, must abide by the OAS charter which enshrines the "principle of non-intervention and the right to self determination."

The US proposal, put forward at the summit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who headed the meeting -- had raised hackles among OAS members, especially Venezuela, whose Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez said the OAS was "not authorized to make evaluations on the state of democracy in the different countries."

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Rice at the summit: "Madam president, democracy is not imposed. It is born from dialogue."



US Secretary of State US Condoleezza Rice (R) makes a point at Organization of American States 35th General Assembly next to OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza. The 34-member OAS omitted a US proposal on strengthening democracy in Latin America from the closing statement of its three-day summit(AFP/File/Roberto Schmidt)

[Coexist]

1. kick...

born from dialogue? But, but, you can't talk out the end of an M-16, can you, cuz that's how we spread democracy in these here parts.

[Roland99]

2. HA! Take that U.S.! We can take of our own...they're saying.

Good...stand up for yourselves!

[damntexdem]

3. Dubya better watch out:

'... proposals to "address situations" likely to compromise the "democratic political process or the rule of law" ...'

They might want to 'address situations' like Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004.

[Say_What]

4. Uncle Sam bitch slapped by LatAm--Noriega throws a temper tantrum

From Narco News...

...Noriega, not used to losing gracefully, simply blew his top, spitting loudly that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is to blame for Bolivia's crisis.

...According to well placed sources in La Paz, yesterday, prior to the resignation of Bolivia's president, heir apparent to the Bolivian throne, Congressional leader Hormando Vaca Diez, had gone to Bolivia's military brass with a plan already written for how the military will declare martial law and ruthlessly stamp out the social movements when Vaca Diez becomes president. (Who wrote that plan, Mr. Noriega?).

But the Bolivian generals told Vaca Diez to pound sand: They said, according to our sources, that they were tired of being the villains of history, causing coup after coup, massacring their own people. (This - and perhaps copious amounts of alcohol - explains Vaca Diez's crestfallen voice during his Monday night press conference, heard around the world via Radio Erbol.)

US Ambassador Roger Noriega is red-faced angry that the Bolivian military won't get to work assassinating Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, Oscar Olivera, the entire city of El Alto, and Authentic Journalists who are covering the story. And Noriega blames Chavez!

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/8/91629/48549

[Robbien]

6. Oh dear lord, the US tried to present its own NED propaganda article

as proof that Chavez was meddling in Bolivia!:

Under fire to provide proof of Noriega's bombastic claim, the U.S. Department of State put out a statement later in the day:

At the end of the afternoon, the State Department distributed press releases to justify its accusation. Among them was an interview published by the conservative Argentine daily La Nación last May 16, titled: "Evo Morales: We Want to Join with Fidel and Chávez."

They also distributed wire reports that announced that Morales had invited Chavez to Bolivia, or that (Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party backed President Chavez."

These are hardly proofs of anything, not like, say, Julio Mamani Conde's report yesterday about the United States' meddling role in Bolivian affairs this week... And certainly not on the scale of the hard evidence, based on the U.S. government's own unclassified documents, that the U.S. had directly meddled fomenting unrest in Venezuela!

[Say_What]

8. Those State Department dummies are a laugh a minute...

talk about desperation... :rofl:

[Robbien]

10. Its great to see someone say Prove It

Here BushCo babbles on about his fantasy world and the talking heads bob their heads along with them. SA isn't having any of that nonsense.

The nice thing about having incompetants such as Rice and Noreiga as ambassadors is that they cannot get anyone to agree with them.

[Say_What]

11. "Democracy and poverty are just incompatible"

..."Democracy can thrive in many ways as long as those forms honor universal principles such as freedom of speech and respect for human rights," Rodriguez said.

"The quality of life is simply nonexistent and as a result of that, the quality of democracy is simply precarious and its strength uncertain... Democracy and poverty are just incompatible," the Venezuelan Minister said. The OAS is currently drafting the Social Charter of the Americas, a proposal put forward by Venezuela last year aimed at addressing poverty in the hemisphere.

On the other hand, the Foreign Minister of the Bahamas also rejected interventionist policies pointing out that "people don’t want to be put in a situation where it appears that a country or particular countries are being targeted for special treatment and isolation in an arbitrary fashion."

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1651
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of pretty decent recaps at venezuelanalysis.com.

[burrowowl]

18. Even Kevin Phillips

an X-repub says so in: Wealth and Democracy!

[oblivious]

17. That article is a must-read. Priceless. DAMN CHAVEZ!

Noriega blames Chavez because Chavez - a military soldier admired by many just like him across the hemisphere - has set the gold standard of how to put an Armed Forces to work on behalf of the people instead of against them. And simply by surviving the coup attempts against him, and by continuing his kinder-gentler non-repressive military model, Chavez has showed by example that Latin American military organizations need not be repressors as they have historically been.

That is why, kind readers, Noriega and Washington blame Chavez: not because of any evidence of direct involvement, but because the Bolivian military is balking (so far) at murdering its own people. Damn Chavez!

[Robeson]

5. They do not want U.S. style imposed Democracy which is becoming...

...democracy at the end of the barrel of a gun.

Love this statement from above:

"Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Rice at the summit: "Madam president, democracy is not imposed. It is born from dialogue."

[Roland99]

7. Oh yeah...nice smackdown!

[Say_What]

9. Background piece on Bolivia

<clips>

WHAT LED to the toppling of Carlos Mesa?

Mass protests have been underway in Bolivia since the middle of May, but they reached a new pitch at the beginning of June when leading sectors among Bolivia's urban and rural workers rejected the idea of postponing the nationalization of natural gas resources until after a Constituent Assembly.

Bolivia's Congress had said no to nationalization the week before, but was to consider convoking the assembly and holding a referendum on regional autonomy. As president, Carlos Mesa had already issued a decree calling for the assembly and referendum. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress could convene a Constituent Assembly.

But protesters refused to settle for the assembly and referendum-measures clearly aimed at breaking the momentum of the recent mobilizations.

As of the first weekend in June, the capital of La Paz came to a virtual standstill, with its gas supplies exhausted from almost two weeks of continuous roadblocks. Cochabamba and Oruro saw large demonstrations, including the occupation of gas refineries. At the end of the week, the government minister for economic development resigned, revealing a crisis in the Mesa's cabinet.

http://www.counterpunch.org/maass06082005.html

[CHIMO]

12. The US Seeks to Blame Chavez for Bolivian Turmoil

As Yogi Berra supposedly once said, it feels like deja vu all over again.

Five years ago, as Bolivia was similarly wracked by political turmoil during the Cochabamba water revolt, Bolivian government spinners sought desperately to blame the protests on “narcotraffickers”. The Associated Press reporter at the time, who just happened to be a close friend of the President’s spinner, pedaled the bogus analysis in AP dispatches all over the US. We were supposed to believe that Bechtel’s massive water rate hikes had nothing to do with those protests at all.

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/index.htm

[Robbien]

13. Just think, if BushCo wasn't bumbling around

exposing the fact that our media is just propaganda, we may have bought into this scheme they are pushing today.

One thing I've learned in the last five years is to assume the media is promoting an agenda and that agenda is not the reporting of facts.

[leftchick]

15. exactly what I have learned as well...

I never read or hear one report from the "US propaganda news" without a huge amount of doubt and skepticism. Now I know how folks in the USSR felt. :(

[Robbien]

14. Ha! That weasel right-winger Vaca Diez tried to move the government

to another city, but the protesters put paid to that idea.

Hormando Vaca Diez's plan to hold a session of the Bolivian Congress tomorrow in Sucre, rather than the legislative capital of La Paz, has reportedly hit a speedbump.

Agence France Press reports:

(AFP) Opposition leader Evo Morales on Wednesday called upon Quechua (Bolivia's second largest indigenous ethnic group) peasant farmers to block the installation of Congress in the city of Sucre (740 kilometers from La Paz), where the resignation of President Carlos Mesa and the assent of his succesor that have convulsed Bolivia are to be decided.

Morales said that the blockades of the route surrounding this lower Andean city, where the country was founded 180 years ago, will be hardened to stop the rise of Congress President Hormando Vaca Diez.

Vaca Diez, first in line in the Constitutional succession, called the Congress to a plenary session in Sucre at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, in spite of the opposition by social movements in La Paz.

"Not one compañero is going to lift the road blockades in the interior of the country," the coca growers leader warned...

According to Morales, mineworkers (of nearby regions) where in 1996 eleven indigenous were killed by the military are now headed toward Sucre.

According to the leader of the powerful One Union Confederation of Bolivia Farm Workers, Roman Loayza, who is close to Morales, some 2,000 Quechua campesinos have left from the neighboring state of of Cochabamba toward Sucre...

Tick... Tock...

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/8/145449/0216#1

[Joanne98]

16. Condi is looking more like Rodney Dangerfield everyday!

She just can't get any respect! lol

[struggle4progress]

19. kick

[leesa]

20. That 'exporting democracy' crap isn't gonna work there Condisleaza