Cuba Calls for Concerted South Effort to Defend Right to Development

Cuba, the host country of the South Summit, Tuesday called upon developing countries to make concerted efforts to forcefully defend the right of the South to development, an essential condition for achieving peace in the world, against "the unjust and unsustainable" international economic system.

Delivering his welcoming statement at the opening session of the meeting of foreign ministers, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said, "We will coordinate our positions and our demands, and afterwards we will go together to address the developed countries."

"The economic and financial system is unjust and unsustainable," he said.

"What is the use of an economic system that does not guarantee employment, nor protect the environment, and rather than reducing poverty, actually increase it; a system that does not ensure education and health for everyone? What is the use of a system in which the elderly are superfluous and a growing number of children work or turn to prostitution?" he asked.

"What is the use of a system in which speculators make fabulous fortunes, and those who work in the real economy -- in agriculture, mining and industry--do not have enough to eat?" he asked.

"The summit should resolutely demand that solidarity is globalized, not injustice," he said.

"The meeting must forcefully demand our peoples' right to development, an essential condition for achieving peace on the Planet, even more so now that criticism is growing of the consequences for our economies, of the unjust neoliberal politics which have been dogmatically imposed for more than a decade now," he said.

"Fair trade that promotes our development, and not free fierce trade," he said. "Respect for diversity, and recognition and support for the most vulnerable!"

"A solution to the problem of our external debt, and not just inadequate alternatives--that is what we are asking for," he said. "Access to the markets of the North of our products, and fair prices -- that is what we need!"

"Why do they talk of trade liberalization, whilst making it ever more difficult for us to access the knowledge and new technologies, which are essential if we are to compete?" he asked again.

"At the summit, we must demand that policies are adopted which really do encourage the transfer of modern technologies to our countries, along with the resources needed to adequately train and qualify our workers -- the only possible way of ensuring that they remain in our countries," he said.

"We must put a stop to the dangerous tendency of privatizing knowledge in the world, and we must demand that scientific research is truly geared towards finding a solution to the pressing problems which are facing humanity, and does not just aim to satisfy the superfluous luxuries and whims of a privileged minority," he said.

Meanwhile, the Cuban foreign minister said that the South Summit "must declare our desire that the World Trade Organization promotes an in-depth and extensive debate, which takes our opinions and interests into account."

"The Organization cannot be owned by a small group of developed countries!" he said. "The World Trade Organization has to belong to all the countries that created it!"

"We need the official development assistance, and that can only come to us from the developed countries, which are the ones that have the money," he said.

"Our meeting must forcefully demand that the developed countries fulfill their promise, which they undertook in 1970, to devote 0.7 percent of their GDP (gross domestic product) to official development assistance."

The U.N. General Assembly, in 1970, established the goal for wealthy countries to earmark 0.7 percent of their GDP for assistance to developing countries, but only very few developed countries have kept their commitment over the past decades.

"In order to find rational and viable solutions to these problems, dialogue between the North and the South is essential," he said. "However, our meeting will have to make it clear that this dialogue must be developed from a basis of respect and equality, not by imposing the interests of the strongest."

"The summit will give new impetus to cooperation among ourselves, but we must recognize that this will not solve our serious problems, and that we are going to be met by the almost insurmountable obstacle of the lack of finance needed to see these programs through," he said. "South-South cooperation must also receive encouragement and resources from the countries of the North."

The foreign ministers, together with their respective heads of state or government, are to attend the South Summit, slated for April 10-14. They are to discuss globalization, knowledge and technology, the South-South cooperation and the North-South relations.

Senior officials began a working meeting Monday morning to hammer out the two draft documents to be adopted at the end of the summit on April 14. Foreign ministers will consider the drafts and then forward them to the approval of heads of state and government when they begin to meet for three days Wednesday morning.

Although the G-77 membership grew to 133 countries over the past decades, the original name of the body, set up by 77 developing countries in June 1964 in Geneva, was retained due to its historic significance.

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