VIENNA: The EU-Latin America/Caribbean summit, which began on Friday in the Austrian capital, will be marked by the contradictions that pervade relations between the two regions. While the governments tout cooperation, civil society organisations complain that it often merely serves to strengthen ties that benefit corporate Europe.

Social activists say EU-Latin America relations fail to take into account the economic asymmetries and power imbalances between the two regions, or the social reality and urgent need for development, social justice, environmental protection and defence of human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.

A typical official declaration came from European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and European Neighbourhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner last month, when she presented the new EU strategy aimed at strengthening the ‘partnership’ with Latin America and the Caribbean.

“We want to reinforce our mutual understanding and the existing partnership to create new dialogues and opportunities for both regions,” she said.

But non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Europe and Latin America question such statements, and say official development aid and cooperation is at times just another channel for draining resources from Latin America to Europe.

“Our 15 years of experience of free-market neoliberal policies have shown that multinational capital has taken control of our natural resources, our trees, our water, even our seeds,” said Pedro Stedile with Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST).

Stedile, who is taking part in the Permanent People’s Tribunal held parallel to the summit, mentioned in particular ‘European transnational capital’, such as the capital that is financing the Norwegian-Brazilian Aracruz Celulosa paper pulp company.

Both the MST and Vía Campesina, a global network of rural movements, say Aracruz Celulosa is the company with the largest ‘green desert’ in Brazil, with more than 250,000 hectares planted with fast-growing pulp trees — which deplete the soil and water sources — including 50,000 in the southern province of Río Grande do Sul alone.

“Aracruz’s factories produce 2.4 million tons of white paper pulp a year, polluting the air and water, and damaging the health of local residents, without generating significant employment and without contributing to just economic development characterised by solidarity,” Stedile told IPS in Vienna.

The Permanent People’s Tribunal is holding its hearings in Vienna Wednesday through Friday.

The purpose of the tribunal, according to the statement distributed to the press, is “to denounce human rights violations and cases of economic and environmental injustice committed by the 30 biggest European corporations in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean”.

The criticisms have targeted some oil companies that, according to Christian Ferreyra, with the Bolivian Documentation and Information Centre, are taking part in the construction of a pipeline in the Chaco basin in southern Bolivia.

“We are opposed to the pipeline, which we consider a mechanism of expropriation of Bolivia’s natural resources,” said Ferreyra at the opening session of the Permanent People’s Tribunal.

The central role of European corporations in the EU strategy towards Latin America has been demonstrated by the business forum taking place simultaneously with the summit in Vienna, organised by the Austrian Ministry of the Economy and Federal Economic Chamber, the country’s biggest business lobby group.

Some 300 executives from the two regions are taking part in the forum, under the theme ‘bridging the two worlds through business and culture’. The panels are discussing opportunities for global companies in Latin America and the Caribbean, finance and trade, global forces and their implications for Latin America, and other issues.

Speakers include EU Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner and the bloc’s Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry Günter Verheugen, as well as Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno and executives from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and leading European corporations.

In the view of Abel Esteban, an analyst with the Corporate Europe Observatory, the business forum is basically a debate among lobby groups, where European participants predominate.

“Many of the representatives of Latin American companies actually represent subsidiaries of European corporations,” the activist told IPS.

“Besides discussing business opportunities in Latin America, the business representatives have already called on the governments of Latin America to accelerate progress towards free trade agreements between the two regions,” he added.

Esteban pointed to a message from the European Commission — the EU executive body — which stated that commissioners Ferrero-Waldner and Verheugen would stress the benefits of free trade agreements and strong commercial ties between Europe and Latin America.

The commission also expressed hope that the business forum would contribute to progress in the negotiations on free trade deals, thanks to the active participation of the sector in the talks.

The fourth EU-LAC summit brings together the heads of state and government of the 25 EU member states and the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The first three EU-LAC summits were held in Rio de Janeiro in 1999, in Madrid in 2002 and in Guadalajara (Mexico) in 2004.

During the summit, the leaders will continue negotiating free trade agreements between the two regions, and will discuss cooperation in the fight against drugs, organised crime and terrorism, and in areas like migration, energy and science and technology.

Latin American leaders will also hold side meetings to discuss a broad range of issues as well as bilateral and regional disputes and conflicts.

Despite the pomp and high-profile of the Vienna summit, most observers expect few to no concrete results, especially given the imbalances between the two regions, in economic clout and other areas, and the lack of unity among Latin American countries that is threatening to weaken their own regional blocs.—Dawn/IPS News Service

The political science department of the University of Karachi the other day arranged a discussion on the Indo-US nuclear deal and Pakistan’s strategic deterrence. The subject generated an animated exchange between the faculty members, guest speakers and the students.

The debate might have been a mix of critical assessment of the deal and a somewhat emotive argument in support of a similar arrangement with Pakistan. Names are being avoided here in the interest of institutional homogeneity and to avoid causing embarrassment due to unintended attribution to individual participants.

Besides being unfair to Pakistan, America’s “frontline ally” in its war on terror, the nuclear deal with India not only violates the letter and spirit of the NPT but also America’s own doctrine of Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).

PSI is defined as ‘a global initiative aimed at stopping shipments of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems and related materials worldwide....’

Both NPT and PSI stand undeniably compromised by the US decision to help India with its nuclear power programme. Section 3 of the NPT obliges each nuclear weapon state not to transfer to any non-NPT member any fissionable material, even for peaceful purposes.

‘Strategic deterrence’ elicited an informed response behoving an academic gathering. A faculty member aptly observed that the “absence of war is not peace”. The abiding state of strategic deterrence underscores the continuance of a situation of high tension between India and Pakistan.

The question is: deterrence to what end and for how long? For so long as strategic deterrence lasts, the confidence-building nuclear threat remains more of a placebo than a real cure, more of a temporising ploy than a promise for real and enduring peace.

Nuclear deterrence between the two countries as perilously juxtaposed as India and Pakistan with a time lag of just a few minutes between launch and blast would be practically the other name for Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD was the only sane idea during the cold war to convince the Soviet Union and the United States of the utter insanity of a nuclear adventure.

That was in spite of the trans-Atlantic time lag of 30 to 35 minutes between launch and strike and the multiple strike capabilities of the two superpowers. Pakistan’s known nuclear doctrine of ‘first use’ is predicated on its perception of the omb as the “weapon of last resort”. It indicates either the lack or the inadequacy of a second strike capability.

Pakistan may indeed have more in the basement than is generally known. It may even have a technological edge over India in the potential yield and power of its nuclear arsenal. Territorially, however, it does not have the strategic depth India has.

Yet another question to engage Pakistan’s strategic planners would be the formulation of its target plan. India has about as many Muslims as Pakistan — a large number of them in cities like Delhi and Agra, sites of the best-known architectural wonders of Mughal India.

These remain parts of our ancient glory and heritage even after partition. A nuclear strike, no matter how precisely targeted, besides exposing many of these marvels to certain destruction would make little difference between friend (Muslim) and foe (Hindu).

An academic, a historian, aptly remarked that it was about time to forget bitter memories of the partition and proceed with the development of Pakistan and national reconstruction. Pakistan is there to stay as a thriving and prosperous country.

The way history is being taught at the academia is, however, regrettable. Facts are being hopelessly mixed with fiction. As a result new (‘jihadi’) emotionalism takes the place of enlightened moderation.

Kashmir was not the cause but the consequence of partition. The oft-repeated statement about Kashmir being the unfinished agenda of partition is essentially self-defeating. This could in the ultimate analysis lead to a partitioning of Jammu and Kashmir much in the same way as the partitioning of the subcontinent itself.

The firstKashmir war deeply impacted on the political culture of Pakistan by bringing the army to the fore as the principal custodian of national security — in effect of its very existence. Barely two years after the ceasefire in Kashmir (1949), the Rawalpindi conspiracy, master-minded by Maj-Gen Akbar Khan, chief of the general staff, was unearthed (1951).

The grave contingency arising after the earth-shaking episode of September 11, 2001, also came in for some focussed discussion. There was general support for President Musharraf’s ready response to America’s call to the war on global terrorism. It was both statesmanly and expedient.

For its part, however, America has been less than helpful to Pakistan and appreciative of its ungrudging cooperation. Besides the nuclear deal with India is the new framework for the US-India efence Relationship — in effect a defence pact signed by the two defence ministers, Donald Rumsfeld and Parnab Mukherji. This s even more significant for Pakistan as a potential destabiliser of the conventional balance.

There was a sort of shared opinion in support of the American intervention in the Kashmir dispute for a final and fair settlement. One senior academic argued that the matter could be settled once and for all if America really meant business.

At the end of the discussion there was a general consensus on the two neighbours closing the chapter of hostility and conflict and learning to live in peace and amity. Almost half a century of tension, hostility and armed conflict have cost them dearly in terms of socio-economic development and the well-being of their people.

One speaker even wanted the audience to ‘think South Asia’ as the future hub of the region. Yet another point discussed at some length was about internal instability in the context of the raging turmoil in the Frontier’s tribal areas and Balochistan. The ‘enemy within’ pose a greater threat than the ‘enemy without.’

— The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.