Canada wants special OAS summit on S.America chaos

www.alertnet.org NEWSDESK   24 Feb 2003 19:09

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Canada wants the Organization of American States to hold an extraordinary summit this year to discuss the growing chaos in South America but Brazil is effectively blocking the idea, officials said on Monday.

The 34-nation OAS is due to hold its next Summit of the Americas in Argentina in early 2005, but the officials said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien felt the grouping needed to take stock of increasing disarray in some member states.

"In the last 18 months, close to two years, there have been all kinds of difficult times in the hemisphere," a senior Canadian official told reporters, saying Chretien wanted to look at "the convulsions" that have rocked the OAS recently.

"It (the proposed summit) would partly be an occasion to reassure ourselves, to examine our main objectives and to reaffirm hemispheric cooperation," he said.

The leaders of the OAS held their last summit in Quebec City in April 2001 and since then several South American nations have experienced severe problems.

Argentina suffered an economic meltdown that spilled over into Uruguay. Venezuela is in the grip of an increasingly violent standoff between friends and foes of President Hugo Chavez, 32 people died last week in riots in Bolivia, while Colombia is still in the grip of a decades-long civil war.

Mexican President Vicente Fox is volunteering to host the proposed OAS summit if all member states agree on the need to meet but Brazil has said more than once that it needs more time to study the idea, the official said.

Diplomats said Brazil -- already locked in a protracted dispute with Ottawa over subsidies to aircraft manufacturers -- was reluctant to let Canada take the lead on problems mainly affecting South America.

Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham raised the idea of the summit during an official visit to Brazil last month but did not get any firm commitment.

In Brasilia, no one was immediately available for comment at the foreign ministry.

The Quebec City summit focused on the need to strengthen democratic institutions in the OAS and the official said Chretien did not doubt that the organization was heading in the right direction.

"We're getting there. But at the same time there are convulsions in the hemisphere which deserve attention," he said, adding that the proposed summit would discuss "questions of governance, the big principles of democracy and where the hemisphere is going in this regard".

Another reason to hold an interim summit was the fact that since Quebec City, around a dozen OAS members had elected new leaders, he said.