www.guardian.co.uk Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Friday January 10, 2003 The Guardian

The Bush administration yesterday announced a new job - in effect a demotion - for Otto Reich, the controversial Cuban-American who has been responsible for policy in Latin America for the past year.

The decision is a climbdown which acknowledges that the Senate, even with its new Republican majority, will not confirm Mr Reich as assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere.

Mr Reich, a hardline anti-communist, has been accused of supporting terrorists in Central America and appearing to welcome a military coup in Venezuela.

The White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced that Mr Reich would be joining the National Security Office in a minor role. It was described by Latin American analysts as a consolation prize.

Mr Fleischer said Mr Reich would be reporting to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in his new post.

"Ambassador Reich has a distinguished record of service to the United States both outside and in government," he said.

The new chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, the moderate Republican Richard Lugar, had already made it clear that he would not vote to confirm Mr Reich.

The administration had considered submitting his name again but has decided to avoid an embarrassing rebuff by the committee.

Mr Reich was able to occupy the post last year because President Bush used a formula called a recess appointment, which let him take office without Senate confirmation.

In November he was temporarily named as the state department's special envoy to Latin America, reporting to the secretary of state, Colin Powell, but Mr Powell was said to be uncomfortable about the presence of such a controversial figure.

Now he has been moved again to a lesser post.

"This is a consolation prize, a face-saver," said Larry Birns, the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs which monitors Latin American politics.

He said that Mr Reich had originally been appointed to placate "the Miami Cubans", who are a significant body of support for the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, the president's brother.

He added that Mr Powell had become increasingly aware of the negative effect Mr Reich's position had on Latin American relations, particularly since the election of the leftwingers Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador.

Last April Mr Reich came under scrutiny for apparently welcoming the military coup which led to the brief removal from office of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

More recently he angered the Venezuelan government by saying: "An election is not sufficient to call a country a democracy."

The Venezuelan vice-president, Jose Vicente Rangels, called him "a clown".

Mr Reich, 57, rose to promi nence in the 80s when he was a public diplomacy adviser at the state department.

He used his office to promote the cause of the contras, who were then trying to overthrow the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. An investigation by the comptroller general found that Mr Reich's office had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda" on the contras' behalf.

He has been accused by his critics of supporting terrorism by his assistance to the contras. He was also accused of assisting the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch to gain the right to live in the US, an accusation he has denied.

The assistant secretary of state appointment will probably be taken by the Panamanian-American Roger Francisco Noriega, who has been the US representative to the Organisation of American States, and is considered less confrontational.

Mr Birns predicted that Mr Reich would shortly return to the business world, where he used to be a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and Bacardi rum.

www.natcath.com By BART JONES

Their names were synonymous with the U.S. “dirty wars” in Central America in the 1980s and the Iran-contra scandal. Today, Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte have resurfaced and are helping run U.S. policy toward Latin America again.

The re-emergence of the Reagan-era hardliners is causing dismay among human rights activists and some Latin America experts who fear the United States is returning to the Cold War days when it backed brutal dictatorships, covertly supported coups and sabotaged leftist movements. “There isn’t a single democratic leader in Latin America that doesn’t reject and deplore the role that our government played in Central America during the 1980s,” said Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. “To choose men like Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich is an insult.”

Said Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a left-of-center think tank in Washington: “We seem to have learned very little from an extremely bloody past. ... This is probably the most ideological and least talented Latin America team either in Republican or Democratic administrations that I have witnessed in monitoring this scene for 35 years.”

The return of Reich, Abrams and Negroponte comes as a wave of leftists rises to power across Latin America, largely riding a backlash against U.S.-prescribed free-market economic policies known as the “Washington Consensus” that some economists blame for exacerbating mass poverty.

Leftists now occupy the presidencies of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti. A left-of-center politician may also win next March’s election in Argentina, which would put two-thirds of Latin America’s population under leftist rule.

Since assuming their posts a year or so ago, the Bush team has come under fire for allegedly supporting a coup against Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, blocking economic aid for the government of one-time radical priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, and trying to undermine the campaigns of leftist presidential candidates in Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Administration officials say they are promoting democracy in Latin America, encouraging free trade and waging a war on drugs. They defend the record of Reich, 57, a right-wing Cuban-American and ardent foe of Fidel Castro who until Nov. 22 was assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. He is now special envoy to Latin America.

“His performance as assistant secretary of state since January was exemplary,” State Department spokesman Robert Zimmerman said. “He has the complete confidence of the secretary of state and of the president and of the state department senior leadership.”

Zimmerman added: “Given his substantial expertise, his knowledge of the region, he has been asked to be the secretary’s special envoy for Western Hemisphere Affairs.”

Abrams, 54, who was assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs during the Reagan administration, served until early December as the National Security Council’s senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations. President Bush recently appointed him director of Middle Eastern Affairs at the White House.

Negroponte, 63, U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, now is U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Another Iran-contra figure, John M. Poindexter, who served as national security adviser under Reagan, today is director of the Information Awareness Office at the Pentagon.

The Bush team has provoked controversy on a number of fronts in Latin America. In April it tacitly backed an attempted coup against Chavez, pledging to work with an interim government that lasted two days and abolished the constitution, the su-preme court and the Congress. A high-level State Department official called allegations that the United States supported the overthrow of Venezuela’s democratically elected president “absolutely false” and said the administration was cleared in a probe by the State Department’s inspector general.

“We investigated fully, and there was absolutely no winking or green light,” the official said.

Two months later, U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha warned Bolivians that electing indigenous leader Evo Morales could result in a cut-off of U.S. aid. The State Department official said Rocha was responding to provocative comments by Morales calling for the Drug Enforcement Administration to be thrown out of Bolivia and for the U.S. Embassy to be closed.

Morales, a Marxist, came soaring out of fourth place in polls after the comments and lost the election by 1.5 percent. Last year, U.S. officials made similar comments about former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega during Nicaragua’s presidential election. “It was a direct attempt to say we’re going to make you starve if you elect Ortega. And it worked,” Birns said. Ortega lost.

U.S. officials deny they meddled in the election.

The United States also is helping to block $500 million in international aid for Haiti, an effort, critics say, to strangle the economy and force Aristide out. U.S. officials contend Aristide has mismanaged Haiti and ruled in an autocratic way.

Not everyone thinks the United States is returning to an interventionist policy aimed at crushing leftists in Latin America, or that Reich has mishandled his post.

Steve Johnson, an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, said that after a rough start, Reich recently has established good relations with Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and put the United States on record as opposing any more coups in Venezuela. “I think he’s done fairly well,” Johnson said.

A so-called “recess appointment” in-stalled as assistant secretary of state for a year without congressional approval, Reich automatically lost his post when the most recent congressional session ended. Bush then named him special envoy, which does not require congressional approval. Officials say he will still play a key role in policy toward Latin America. Bush could nominate him to serve again as assistant secretary of state, but even conservative analysts such as Johnson say he would not automatically win approval from the Republican-controlled Congress.

“I don’t think Republicans are monolithic in their support” for Reich, Johnson said. He believes there is a tug-of-war in the administration on Latin America policy between hardliners such as Reich and moderates led by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell visited Colombia Dec. 3 and 4, but Reich did not accompany him. Some took that as a sign that Reich’s star is fading.

Still, Powell’s attention has been focused on the possible war with Iraq and the war on terrorism, leaving the United States without a clear policy toward the region, according to many analysts. “I’m not sure anybody really knows where the administration is going on Latin American policy,” Johnson said.

Birns said the policy under Reich has consisted mainly of attacking anyone perceived as friendly toward Reich’s archenemy, Fidel Castro. “He simply memorizes the names of those he considers to be communist, which means if you are for the normalization of relations with Cuba, you’re a communist,” Birns said. “Reich is looking for villains. He’s looking for some commies.”

But “the Soviet Union is dead. Cuba does not export revolution,” Birns added. “These are not the issues of today. The issues of today are that after several decades of the Washington Consensus development model, the number of poor in Latin America is greater than ever.”

The lack of a modern, post-Cold War policy is especially disturbing, analysts say, because the region is undergoing a traumatic upheaval. And meanwhile, the re-emergence of the Iran-contra figures is on few people’s radar screens. “Latin America is disintegrating, and nobody’s noticing,” said White, who is also president of the Center for International Policy, a left-of-center think tank. If Argentine leftists win next March’s presidential election, “roughly two-thirds of Latin America will live under reformist, populist rulers who explicitly reject Washington’s prescriptions of freer trade, globalization and the selling-off of public assets,” he said.

“Somebody should be paying attention to them,” White said. “Somebody should be talking about something else except how big a threat Fidel Castro is and the absurd charge that he’s a terrorist.”

Bart Jones is a reporter for Newsday.

National Catholic Reporter, January 10, 2003

www.nytimes.com January 9, 2003 By ELIZABETH BECKER

ASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — The Bush administration officially opened negotiations today to create a free trade agreement with five Central American countries within a year, a big leap in its ambitious plans for a Nafta-like zone throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The announcement cemented the role of trade as the administration's primary policy focus with Latin America. It gives the United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick, chief responsibility for promoting improved American relations in the region at a time much of the administration is focused on Iraq and terrorism.

Indeed, Richard E. Feinberg, former special assistant for inter-American affairs to President Bill Clinton and an early advocate of the regional free trade concept, said, "I believe these free trade agreements will be seen as the 21st-century version of strategic alliances."

Some critics in Latin America are annoyed at what they say is the administration's strategy of dealing first with small countries that have fewer trade disagreements with the United States rather than including bigger trading rivals like Brazil.

And the initiative intensifies competition between Washington and the European Union for access to the Latin American market, where Europe is the second-largest trading partner after the United States. European officials in Brussels have taken note of Mr. Zoellick's Latin American push since Congress granted trade promotion authority — once called fast track — to President Bush in August. And now the Europeans are working to complete negotiations for a similar free trade agreement with Mercosur, the world's third-largest trade group, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay as well as Bolivia and Chile as associate members.

"It is obvious we are in stiff competition right now," a European representative in Washington said. "Our agreement with Mexico came after Nafta, and we don't want to lose out again, especially not with Mercosur.

Flanked by representatives of several countries that just decades ago knew the United States mostly as a purveyor of weapons in their civil wars, Mr. Zoellick said American interests in the region were now centered on liberalized trade, economic development and democracy.

"This is more than a trade negotiation," he said. It is "a plan to strengthen democracy and promote development in a region that has known too little of both."

However, these five countries — Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua — offer relatively few of the problems that will appear in the hemispherewide talks for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, or F.T.A.A., since their trade largely meshes with the United States.

Critics, particularly in Brazil, say they fear that this regional agreement is an attempt by the United States to divide and rule, forcing the bigger Latin nations to accept Washington's dictates in the wider negotiations.

"I think this is tactical," said Mario Mugnaini, vice president for international affairs at the Federation of Industries in São Paulo. "If there are too many bilateral accords made around the region, then Brazil would ultimately favor closing the F.T.A.A. negotiations, but I don't think that's what the United States wants."

Still, United States trade with these five Central American countries is significant. They import a total of $9 billion worth of products from the United States every year, the rough equivalent of American exports to Russia, India and Indonesia combined. And the United States imports $11 billion worth of goods from the five countries, with nearly three-fourths of the products entering duty free under special-preference programs.

The European Commission's chief trade negotiator, Pascal Lamy, seeking to regain a European foothold in the region and to capitalize on its Old World ties to Spain and Portugal, will travel to Brazil in three weeks — seeking to fortify relations on a continent that in just a few months has moved swiftly toward a greater opening toward the United States.

The United States and nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere agreed on a blueprint for a Free Trade Area of the Americas in November with the goal of essentially expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement all the way to Argentina by January 2005. Brazil, the largest Latin American economy and the nation most skeptical of a free trade area, is now co-chairman of those talks with the United States.

Last month, Washington concluded a free trade pact with Chile — a model, Mr. Zoellick hopes, for the talks with the Central American nations, particularly in the areas of protection for laborers and the environment.

Bernard W. Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President Bush's father, who first proposed a hemispherewide free trade zone, said that while Mr. Zoellick might be making rapid strides now, they were perhaps 10 years too late.

"I think that the U.S. and Latin America have paid an enormous price for failing to spread free trade throughout the hemisphere after Nafta," Mr. Aronson said. "If we had, the hemisphere would look very different, and much of the economic and political disintegration wouldn't have occurred."

But some of the praise for Mr. Zoellick's efforts today was laced with criticism of the administration for relying on trade to solve a myriad of crises in Latin America. "Zoellick is doing a wonderful job, but it's extremely unfortunate that he is carrying the water for the whole administration," said Julia Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The region, she said, "deserves more senior attention."

At the beginning of the month, Brazilian officials were insulted when Mr. Zoellick led the American delegation to the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leader of the leftist Workers Party. Not only was he considered too junior, but he has been held in some disdain for warning Brazil that it would be reduced to exporting to Antarctica if it failed to join in the Americas trade pact.

Brazil, indeed, has lobbied for the hemispherewide negotiations to be concluded as a single undertaking, meaning all loose ends of an accord must be tied up before all countries involved can sign.

Now, a senior trade official said, Mr. Zoellick is trying to push Brazil "into not just joining the pact, but leading the way."

The major sticking points in all the negotiations will be farm products, especially sugar and citrus fruit.

But the trade and economic ministers of the five Central American countries said today that they were willing to compromise to win permanent access to the United States economy and lure greater investment to their region.

"We're also talking about something more fundamental than trade," said Alberto Trejos, Costa Rica's foreign trade minister. "We'll derive many, many more permanent benefits and a vision of development that will mean more jobs and increased prosperity."

While concern over the strike-induced oil crisis in Venezuela and the civil strife in Colombia may occupy higher-ranking members of the administration, trade officials say they are well suited to be the most prominent representatives of President Bush in the region.

"Economics is the most compelling aspect of U.S.-Latin relations," said Peter Allgeier, a deputy United States trade representative. "Getting access to us gives the message to investors that their countries are a safe place to put their money."