LATIN AMERICA: High-Level Meeting to Debate Threat of Disarmament

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Apr 26 1997 (IPS) - The danger of an arms race in Latin America and mechanisms to curb it will be analysed next week at a high-level meeting organised by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in Atlanta, Georgia.

Former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, invited by Carter, told IPS that rearmament “will divert resources urgently needed by countries in the region to address their pressing social needs.”

The meeting on an “Agenda for the Americas for the 21st Century” to take place Monday and Tuesday will be co-chaired by Carter and former U.S. president Gerald Ford, and is sponsored by a number of U.S.-based transnationals and banks. The heads of State and government of Bolivia, Jamaica and Mexico have confirmed their participation, as has U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.

The heads of the United Nations, Organisation of American States, Inter-American Development Bank, and U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean have also confirmed their attendance, as have personal envoys for the presidents of Argentina and Brazil and a number of U.S. lawmakers, according to the Carter Center.

The discussions will be divided into four panels: Trade, Drugs, the Democratic and Social Agendas and the Security Agenda – Arms Restraint/Border Disputes.

Perez, who will be the keynote speaker at the panel on security issues, warned that Latin America was facing “the imminent danger of an arms race.”

“The problem is extremely urgent, because the arms race will soon be upon us if immediate measures regarding it, and with respect to what the new role of the armed forces in the region should be, are not taken,” said the social democratic leader, two times president ((1974-79 and 1989-93).

According to Perez, the arms race will be set off by the Chilean army’s modernisation of its equipment, set to begin after the coming retirement of its commander-in-chief, former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Chile’s demand for the highest technology weapons will trigger a domino effect among its neighbours, which will then expand throughout the whole region, he predicted.

Perez said he would propose in Atlanta “that no Latin American country dedicate more than a small percentage of its Gross Domestic Product to equipping its armed forces,” and that precise restrictions be set on the purchase of sophisticated weaponry.

The recent lifting of the U.S. embargo on sales of state-of-the- art arms to the region, imposed in the late 1970s, will not be one of the main causes of the arms race, he maintained.

While the U.S. embargo was in place, France, Israel and Russia provided Latin American nations with sophisticated equipment, leading the powerful U.S. defence industry to protest that the prohibited weapons were freely entering the region in spite of the embargo, which ended up only hurting their own interests.

“Naturally President Bill Clinton’s measure to free up arms sales aggravates the situation,” Perez acknowledged, however.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Burelli, a staunch opponent of Perez, downplayed the danger of an eventual arms race, telling IPS that “militarism is not a threat to democracy” in the region.

“The idea of an arms race has lost validity,” argued Burelli, although he conceded that “a modernisation of the entire defence apparatus” was on the cards, due to what he called “a diabolical cycle: weapons fast become obsolete, because there is always a new generation of equipment available to the arms race, which occurs in order to move the massive military machinery that nourishes the entire movement of the economy of developed countries.”

Burelli said the cycle, fomented by the so-called hawks, on occasions “incites patriotic disputes, in order to sell arms to both sides.”

As long as a highly improbable across-the board elimination of arms is not achieved, restrictions will be hard to implement, he added, pointing out that the military today not only have the role of defending national territory, but “national security is now threatened by the drug trade and by phenomena such as terrorism and fanaticism.”

Burelli thus differed with another of Perez’ arguments. According to the former president, “the Pentagon’s thesis that armies in the region should take charge of drug enforcement efforts is very dangerous.

“That would give the armed forces a police function, which would contradict their real role and be unsuitable as well as further complicating the situation in the region.”

What is necessary, he underlined, is a reduction of armies, and a discussion of their role today in a region almost completely free of armed conflict. “The armies should be structured for peace, not war,” he added.

Perez’ attendance at the meeting will be his return to the international stage, after he was freed last September following 28 months of house arrest. He had been sentenced by the Supreme Court for having diverted millions of dollars in secret funds to cooperate with the stabilisation of Nicaragua.

The former president, who did not conclude his second term due to the corruption charges, was absolved of the most serious allegations against him – that he had personally benefited from the reserved funds.