AMERICAS: Cuba, Absent Protagonist at OAS Assembly

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Jose Zambrano

CARACAS, May 28 1998 (IPS) - Cuba will be the only country from the Americas missing at the coming 28th assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Venezuela. But its very absence will predominate over a large part of the debate among the 34 foreign ministers.

Another key issue at next week’s gathering, which opens Monday, will be the implementation of the accords signed at the second Summit of the Americas held in April in Santiago.

The ministers are expected to focus largely on the sense of hemispheric community called for by the 34 heads of state and government, because the OAS Council has already closely examined the 14 specific items on the agenda.

Havana will be “the absent protagonist” at the assembly, Venezuela’s ambassador to the OAS, Francisco Paparoni, acknowledged. He added that “Cuba’s problem is not with the organisation, but with the United States.”

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will attend the first day of the Monday through Wednesday assembly in Caracas, to highlight Washington’s positions before its neighbours, which are increasingly taking recourse to the Cuban question to mark a distance from Washington.

At any rate, it is clear enough that Cuba will not be readmitted to the OAS in Caracas – which, moreover, the government of Fidel Castro has not requested. But the question is how much progress will be made on the issue, or how many, and which, signals will be sent to Havana.

On Venezuela’s suggestion, the 28th assembly will follow a different format – whereas such gatherings consumed five days in the past, mainly long days of speeches in which the foreign ministers reviewed matters of common interest, the Caracas meeting will last only two and a half days.

And as the assembly’s agenda will be virtually closed to all but a few finishing touches, the ministers will be able to devote their time to debating the most pressing issues of hemispheric relations.

This is where the Cuba question will rear its head. Cuba’s return to the inter-American system was already brought up in Washington among the Council – a group of ambassadors which heads the OAS between assemblies – by Mexico’s representative Carmen Moreno.

Moreno proposed the creation of mechanisms to do away with sequelae of the Cold War in the hemisphere: “The parameters have changed; the world has changed; the OAS must change, as it enters the 21st century.”

Cuba was expelled from the OAS in 1962, when the rest of the members – 20 at that time – decided that its political regime based on Marxism-Leninism was incompatible with the inter-American system, and due to its military alliance with an extra-continental power, the now defunct Soviet Union.

That alliance no longer exists. Cuba has also stopped exporting its revolution. But its political system continues to be seen as incompatible with the principles upheld by the OAS – the first item on the Caracas agenda being “promotion of representative democracy.”

“Extremely precise standards, not presently available, are needed” in order for Cuba to return to the OAS, Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia said Wednesday, pointing to the series of pledges taken by the organisation since 1991 with respect to non-democratic governments.

But insistence that Havana be accepted once again is growing in the hemisphere: whether emphasised by Mexico, or by Canada – “Cuba should be here,” Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said in Santiago – or perhaps with the conditioned support of other governments.

Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera, for example, said that “if Cuba were to desire to return to the OAS, it would have Venezuela’s support,” while OAS Secretary-General and former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria proposes a gradual approach to Cuba’s return.

According to Paparoni, “when someone says Cuba should return to the OAS, they are making an expression of goodwill, which should be read as ‘I wish Cuba would become democratic.’ And some say it simply to affirm their independent thinking.”

That assertion of independence has led the region to champion, before Washington, the search for multilateralism and consensus, backed by the hemispheric accords woven together at the summits.

The OAS assembly will make its debut in Caracas as an instrument for political review of those agreements.

Thirty mandates came out of the Santiago Summit, which are to be translated into support for initiatives in education, the fight against drugs, corruption and terrorism, fomenting trust and security among nations of the hemisphere, democracy and human rights, the alliance between the public sector and civil society, and the promotion of the rights of women, workers and indigenous peoples.

Other mandates deal with issues like sustainable development, science and technology, telecommunications and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), to whose negotiation process the OAS will continue providing technical support.

The agenda to be approved in Caracas will contain instructions to OAS bodies on such issues, as well as indications for eradicating poverty and discrimination, and measures in support of land-mine removal in Central America.