OAS Assembly Addresses Issues of Poverty, Democracy

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, June 09, 2003

OAS Assembly Addresses Issues of Poverty, Democracy

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Foreign ministers from the 33 countries of the Organization of American States started a three-day general assembly meeting here Sunday, focusing on the issues of poverty, political situation and democracy in Latin America.

The meeting, which is to end on Tuesday, will also discuss hemispheric security, terrorism and drug trafficking.

The foreign ministers are reportedly to express, in a final declaration, their concern "over the citizenry's increasing loss of confidence in democratic institutions."

Declaration signatories will pledge to do their utmost to increase citizen participation in government and call for strengthening political parties as "intermediaries of demands of the citizens in a representative democracy."

The OAS has kept off the agenda the question of human rights inCuba, which has been accused of cracking down on dissidents and putting three would-be ferry hijackers to death this year. Cuba has been excluded from OAS activities since 1962.

Last Saturday, OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria stressed thelinks between poverty and political unrest and criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States for "indifference" to Latin America's troubles.

"Latin America has not been able to grow economically in recentyears and that clearly generates crisis in government, desperationand frustration," he said.

The IMF and the US Treasury Department "handled this situation with a bit of indifference from a purely technical point of view, which was reflected in Argentina's social and economic crisis," hesaid.

Argentina's economic crisis peaked in late 2001 with its 141-million dollar debt and social and political chaos.

More than 200 million Latin Americans, or some 43 percent of the population in the region, live in poverty, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived here on Sunday to meet his Latin American colleagues as a group for the first time since disagreements erupted over the US-led war on Iraq earlier this year.

Powell will also travel to neighboring Argentina Tuesday to meet the newly elected President Nestor Kirchner.

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