By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 20 2001 (IPS)

Integration and development plans in Latin America will play second fiddle to security questions as a consequence of last week’s terror attacks in the United States, according to a Cuban analyst.

The attacks spawned “a change in the international system,” and security will become more than ever a top priority issue, Isabel Jaramillo, at the University of Havana’s Centre for Studies of the Americas, told IPS.

The analyst said the reformulation of US foreign policy in the wake of the Sep 11 attacks in New York and Washington would leave trade negotiations between the United States and Latin America in a sort of “limbo” for now.

She mentioned, for example, the free trade agreement that the United States is negotiating with Chile, the extension of preferential tariffs sought by the Andean Community, and incipient talks between Washington and the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc.

For Latin America, “this is the worst beginning that the 21st century could have had,” Jaramillo asserted.

She also said it was risky for Latin America to grant “unconditional support or backing with very little margin of autonomous response” to the United States’ calls for a war against terrorism, which she said could unleash “a spiral of violence from which it will be difficult to escape.

“For the nations of Latin America, that could mean a loss of sovereign spaces and an increase in spending in the spheres of defence and security, at the expense of social programmes,” she added.

Hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in the US capital on Sep 11, leaving around 6,000 dead.

The United States, which described the attacks as “an act of war,” has singled out Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden as the chief suspect. Bin Laden has been given sanctuary by the radical Islamist Taleban movement, which controls most of Afghanistan.

But Germán de la Reza, an expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and Metropolitan University, said “the instability” in the trade liberalisation process in the Americas “is merely circumstantial, and will not slow down trade or the negotiating processes.”

On the other hand, Patricia de Galofre, with the Colombian firm Martín Ibarra Asociados, and the chairman of the Peruvian Committee of the Textile Industry, David Lemor, warned that the negotiations on the extension and expansion of the trade preferences granted to the Andean Community trade bloc by the United States could be postponed.

Meanwhile, Colombian parliamentary Deputy Benjamín Higuita said that since Sep 11, terrorism has replaced drugs as the United States’ chief concern and biggest threat, a change that he said would have a heavy impact on the war against drug trafficking.

Colombian researcher Luis Valencia at the public National University predicted that the funds earmarked by the United States for the Andean Initiative, aimed at mitigating the effects of the US-financed Plan Colombia on neighbouring countries, might be cut.

Washington wants the members of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to undertake coordinated security measures, and to support any military reprisals the United States decides to launch against Afghanistan.

According to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), in effect since 1947, “an armed attack…against an American state shall be considered an attack on all American states.”

OAS member states are bound by that treaty to help meet such attacks in the exercise of the right to legitimate defence.

But while the countries of the Americas unanimously condemned last week’s attacks, not all of them believe they should get involved in a US-led war on terrorism, said Jaramillo.

The analyst said military relations in the Americas would continue along the lines of “cooperation and exchanges, although with a greater accent on the fight against terrorism.”

But “the military logic functions by focusing on identifying the enemy,” and in the case of terrorism, it is not an enemy that can be fought with troops and tanks, she pointed out.

Jaramillo also predicted growing problems related to migration questions, which along with drug trafficking and terrorism are the chief issues on the US security agenda with respect to the Americas.

“Migration policies were already being reviewed, but they might now become even more strict,” she said, adding that xenophobia would grow, not only in the United States, but in other regions of the world as well.

Other Cuban experts warned this week that Havana would not escape the “shock wave” of last week’s attacks, even though this Caribbean island nation is not a member of the OAS, and has had no diplomatic ties to the United States since 1960.

High oil prices, which last year drove fuel and energy spending 500 million dollars above projections, could continue to affect the Cuban economy this year.

The government of Fidel Castro cautioned Washington Wednesday that the use of military force against the alleged perpetrators of the attacks on New York and Washington would only foment the hatred that led to the terrorist actions in the first place.

The US people “want justice, not vengeance,” and “will never be in favour of the brutal method of coldly murdering other people, violating laws and punishing without proof,” stated a government communique.

If the evidence against bin Laden exists, “and the religious leaders [of Afghanistan] are not pressured to pass over the deepest convictions of their faith, a solution to the war could be found,” stated the communique.

“Rivers of blood would be saved. This could be the first big step towards a world without terrorism or crimes left unpunished: a truly global association for peace and justice,” from which the people of the United States “would emerge with enormous prestige and respect,” the statement added.

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