TRADE-AMERICAS: Cuba Seeks its Own Alternative to FTAA

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 20 2001 (IPS) - Cuba, the only country in the hemisphere left out of the projected Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Summit of the Americas, would not participate even if it were invited by all 34 participants, according to the socialist government of Fidel Castro.

Cuba’s opposition to the FTAA was emphatically confirmed this week, when Castro stated his rejection of any U.S.-led regional trade agreement.

“The shark wants to eat the sardines,” Castro told a crowd of 12,000 gathered in Havana Monday to commemorate the public admission 40 years ago that the Cuban Revolution was a socialist process.

“At this historic moment, the nations of Latin America are about to be devoured by the United States, which has become a hegemonic superpower today,” said Castro, referring to the third Summit of the Americas, to run Friday through Sunday in Quebec, Canada.

According to the Cuban leader, the FTAA will signify the end of any efforts towards regional integration in Latin America, which he said should pull together before agreeing to any free trade agreement with the United States.

Cuba will be the only country in the Americas absent from the gathering in Quebec, just as it was the only one missing from the first and second hemispheric summits in December 1994 in Miami and April 1998 in Santiago.

Havana has remained isolated from the initiative formally launched by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1994, which involves the other 34 countries of the Americas, and could define the economic future of the region.

The leaders meeting in Quebec are to confirm the 2005 target date for concluding the negotiations on the creation of an FTAA, as recommended by the ministers responsible for foreign trade who gathered earlier this month in Buenos Aires.

But while it will be the big absentee, Cuba will likely haunt this weekend’s summit, as has occurred on previous occasions.

The difference this time around could lay in the radicalisation of Cuba’s official discourse on the question of the FTAA, as well as on this country’s possible return to the Organisation of American States (OAS) fold, from which it was expelled in 1962.

On several occasions in the 1990s, Havana expressed its willingness to return to the OAS, if an invitation was extended by all of its members.

However, Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly (Cuba’s parliament), recently told the press that Havana was not interested in returning to the OAS. “We wouldn’t want to join an organisation from which we were excluded in an arbitrary manner,” he said on Apr 6.

Alarcón, considered one of the most influential politicians in the Castro government, said that even if Cuba changes its mind, “it is unlikely that we will return (to the OAS), because we all know who is the master and who has the final say” – a clear allusion to the United States.

The Cuban government, however, has moved swiftly in the past two years to strengthen its economic ties to several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as with regional blocs.

Isabel Jaramillo with the University of Havana Centre of Studies on the Americas, said Cuba “is outside this process (the creation of the FTAA), but not so far outside,” due to the relations it has established in a parallel manner.

In 1999, Cuba was admitted to the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), a regional body founded in 1989 to facilitate negotiations on agreements on partially phasing out foreign tariffs.

Last year, Cuba also joined the ACP group of former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, which regulates their relations with the European Union (EU).

It also signed an agreement with the Caribbean Common Market (Caricom) last year, and plans to begin negotiating a free trade accord with that bloc this year, which would go into effect two years later.

In addition, it aims to seek a “five plus one” agreement with the Andean Community – made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela – while it continues to make progress in negotiations towards a deal with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc, comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

A Foreign Relations Ministry official told IPS that Cuba hopes to have advanced significantly in its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean when – and if, he added – the FTAA is created.

Havana seems to be making good progress in its race against time, although in certain cases, like the question of economic ties with the EU, negotiations seem to have come to a standstill due to Cuba’s resistance to any hint of political pressure or conditions.

Jaramillo, a specialist on the United States and hemispheric security, said that even if the third Summit of the Americas approves the creation of the FTAA by 2005, the process is likely to be gradual.

But if they fail to take the time needed “to strengthen their own regional dynamics” before joining a hemispheric trade agreement, Latin America and the small economies of the Caribbean will face “a distortion of such magnitude that it will be a veritable disaster,” she warned.