Bush Jump Starts Latin American Agenda

Fri May 23, 2003 03:32 PM ET By Pablo Bachelet

WASHINGTON (<a href=reuters.com>Reuter) - President Bush is preparing a series of meetings with key Latin American leaders in an effort to boost his neglected hemispheric agenda, officials and diplomats say.

On Friday, the White House announced that Bush would meet Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on June 20 in Washington, to "discuss issues of common interest, such as advancing economic growth and prosperity, and promoting peace, freedom, and stability."

Bush also on Friday called Argentina's, Néstor Kirchner, to congratulate him on his election and invite him to the White House for a meeting soon, according to Argentine officials. Kirchner is to be sworn in as president on Sunday.

Officials say renewed presidential involvement in the troubled region is meant to show that Bush is determined to push ahead with his Latin American agenda, which had fallen to one side after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The president very much wants to move on, to the extent that circumstances allow it, from a crisis mode of pursuing foreign policy back toward the agenda that he was beginning to establish before September 11," a State Department official said on Friday.

Early in the presidency, Latin America enjoyed a prominent position in Bush's priorities. The White House hailed what was to be the "Century of the Americas," with 800 million inhabitants united under an umbrella of common democratic ideals and a free trade pact bigger than the European Union.

But the Sept. 11 attacks put the agenda on hold, Latin American observers say, even as the region sank into its first recession in two decades in 2002 and countries like Argentina and Venezuela faced political and economic upheavals.

The Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank, described the U.S.' involvement in Latin America as "sporadic and uneven" in a March 2003 report.

Differences were further underscored by the Iraq war, which stirs uneasy memories of unilateral action by the United States in places like Guatemala (1953-1954) and the Dominican Republic (1965). The Iraq war was very unpopular in Latin America.

"You do get a sense that there is this distrust and suspicion that has come back with a vengeance from Latin Americans toward the United States, that had really declined over the course of the 1990s," said Michael Shifter, with the Inter-American Dialogue.

Relations deteriorated further after White House officials expressed their "disappointment" over the refusal of Mexico and Chile to back a U.N. Security Council resolution in March that would have approved the Iraq invasion.

After the Iraq war, Bush met with six of the seven Latin American heads of state that endorsed the armed action. Among those who opposed the war, the only ones to get a ticket to the White House were the presidents of Uruguay and Guatemala.

That is set to change with the June meeting between Lula, who opposed the Iraq war and has expressed skepticism over Washington's free trade agenda. "The two leaders will discuss issues of common interest, such as advancing economic growth and prosperity, and promoting peace, freedom, and stability," the White House said in a statement.

The leaders of the Western Hemisphere are also set to meet in November in Mexico to discuss economic, social and security issues.