Defense ministers from across the Americas are meeting this week in Bolivia for the Fourth Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, a meeting held every 18 months to improve regional defense cooperation. As most of the English language media reports it, day one of the conference was highlighted by host president Evo Morales’s defense of Latin America’s right to choose its own political and economic allies, even such alliances include Iran. In what the AP describes as “an hour long welcome to delegates” Morales spoke to the US and its representative to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, (without naming names). “Bolivia under my government will have an agreement, an alliance, to anyone in the world. Nobody,” Morales said, “will forbid us from doing so.” As the LA Times notes, Morales also singled out incoming US Subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere chair, Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL), calling him a “confessed assassin” and a “conspiratorial agent against our brother Hugo Chavez.” Morales: “If something happens to Hugo Chavez, the one responsible will be this U.S. congressman.”
Morales’s remarks came after Secretary Gates, speaking with journalists ahead of day one in Santa Cruz, suggested Latin American countries should be cautious in their dealings with Iran. Secretary Gates, as quoted by AFP:
“I think that countries that are dealing with Iran in this arena need to be very cautious and very careful about how they interact with the Iranians in terms of what the Iranians motives might be and what they're really trying to do.”
The AP quotes the Secretary’s Sunday comments further:
“As a sovereign state Bolivia obviously can have relationships with any country in the world that it wishes to. I think Bolivia needs to be mindful of the number of United Nations Security Council resolutions that have been passed with respect to Iran's behavior.”
In his opening statement Monday, the US Defense Secretary steered clear of non-regional issues, instead focusing his very short remarks on hemispheric cooperation, particularly natural disaster response, drug trafficking, and transnational crime. Gates said the US would support new regional efforts toward increased defense spending transparency as well and plans to offer each Latin American defense ministry two scholarships to participate in workshops on strengthening the role of civilians in military institutions. Somewhat interestingly, the US secretary closed his speech by quoting recent Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa in an appeal for increased regional defense cooperation. Vargas Llosa, by way of Gates:
“One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.”
WOLA’s Adam Isacson is at the Bolivia conference as an observer and has been updating by way of Twitter. A couple of interesting points from those updates include concerns about establishing a difference between “security” and “defense” (raised by both Brazil and Uruguay) as well the role of the armed forces in internal matters – something Peru and El Salvador, among others, appear to have defended quite vociferously.
And finally, back on the US and Sec. Gates’ presence in Bolivia, a quick look at a report from independent US military affairs publication, Stars and Stripes, suggests that even while Mr. Gates is in the region this week, his mind is certainly elsewhere.
To other stories:
· On electoral preparations in Haiti, Reuters reports that the European Union has become the latest to reject postponing this Sunday’s presidential vote. While the country’s cholera epidemic will no doubt deter voter turnout, the EU’s top envoy in Haiti, Lut Fabert, said cancelling the vote “could threaten stability” in the country. Ms. Fabert: “At the moment, the EU sees no obstacle blocking these elections from happening. The most important thing is that the process advances according to the rules and that there is a good participation of the population.” The EU is providing some $7 million to help finance Sunday’s elections. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald this morning profiles the woman some believe is the presidential frontrunner, former first lady and longtime opposition leader, Mirlande Manigat. Manigat is the wife of former Haitian president Leslie Manigat, elected in a “military-rigged” election in 1988 but ousted just four-and-a-half months later. The former president came in second to Rene Preval in 2006 elections. And yet, according to the Herald’s Jacqueline Charles, Mirlande Manigat should be considered a political outsider:
“A win would not only make her the first woman elected president of Haiti, and the second to serve, but put the country's long divided opposition in power.”
As for her political platform, the Herald calls Ms Manigat a “constitutionalist” but one who “advocates tearing up the Haitian constitution, starting over and giving Haitians living in the diaspora the right to hold office, including the presidency.” She has focused during her campaign on “reshaping education” by allowing primary-aged children to attend for free; “decongesting” the capital of Port-au-Prince; and “reining in non-governmental organizations.” She has also been a vocal critic of Interim Haiti Reconstruction Plan charged with directing post-quake rebuilding but has also insisted she should would not scrap the plan all-together as president. Ms. Manigat has also gone to great lengths to distance herself from outgoing President Rene Preval. Manigat, on Preval and the importance not just of the presidency but of the legislature, much of which will also be elected Sunday (99 parliamentary seats and 11 of 30 Senate seats are up for grabs as well):
"People are saying Préval has the intention of pulling off a Putin. If they have a majority in both chambers they could name Préval as prime minister... and I would not be able to do anything. It would be very bad for the country. But there is such a rejection of Préval that I wonder if he realizes how unpopular he is right now.”
- Late Addition: CEPR's Dan Beeton in the LA Times this morning has the case against holding Haitian elections Sunday. Beeton: "If the Obama administration wants to stand on the side of democracy and human rights in Haiti, as it did in Burma, it should support the call of Haitian political parties and groups to postpone the elections until all parties are allowed to run and all eligible voters are guaranteed a vote...Continued support for sham elections...would add to a long list of U.S. injustices against one of our closest neighbor states."
· In Honduras, golpista president Roberto Micheletti has submitted a report detailing his version of the June 2009 coup d’etat against the government of Manuel Zelaya to the country’s truth and reconciliation commission, says EFE. Micheletti again added that his succession of Mr. Zelaya was “in accord with constitution.”
· From EFE, in Mexico, business leaders in the city of Matamoros are the latest group of organized interests to call on President Felipe Calderon to “dial down” the country’s drug wars. “We’re asking (Calderon) for a truce and for him to exchange war helicopters for tractors to make the countryside more productive, to exchange the machines guns for loans for businesses, to exchange each exploded grenade for a job,” the vice president of the Federation of National Chambers of Commerce, Julio Almanza, said Monday. The AP says police shot and killed an innocent doctor while carrying out an investigation into the murder of ex-Colima governor Silverio Cavazos-Ceballos yesterday. The story seems illustrative of so much that is wrong with the country’s security forces. The AP:
“Police were mounting an operation to find the killers Sunday when they came across the doctor in an area near the crime. He was startled by officers and began to run away. They shot him when he ignored orders to stop. [State Prosecutor Arturo Diaz] said he had nothing to do with the crime.”
· In Mexico City, the mayors of over 100 cities from around the world committed their local governments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of next week’s Cancun climate summit. Organized by Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard, the LA Times says “the voluntary pact…states they will develop and implement local climate-change action plans that are ‘measurable, reportable and verifiable.’” Meanwhile, at Foreign Policy, climate expert Bill McKibben on what to expect (and what not to expect) from next week’s UN climate meetings in Mexico.
· More on Colombia’s growing role in regional anti-drug/anti-crime operations from EFE, which says the Andean country’s Air Force began conducting joint counter-narcotics operations with the Dominican Republic this week. The object, according to the Colombian military: “to close off Caribbean air space to narcotrafficking flights.”
· At AQ, competing opinions from Patricio Navia and Steven Griner about “re-electionism,” with related implications for the case of Nicaragua and its President Daniel Ortega. [Tim Rogers at Time with more on how the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border dispute appears to have boosted Ortega’s national popularity.]
· Lilia Schwarcz for the New York Review of Books, on Dilma Rousseff, in the shadow of Lula. Also, from the Financial Times, news that Dilma appears prepared to keep current finance minister Guido Mantega on board. The decidedly less “developmentalist” Central Banker Henrique Meirelles’s future with the government remains uncertain.
· And finally, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has blocked the request for the extradition of former Guatemalan Interior Minister, Carlos Vielman, from Spain. The Court ruled there to be “insufficient grounds” for the extradition request at the present moment. Vielman was arrested in Spain at the request of the UN-backed CICIG which has accused the ex-minister of “creating a criminal structure within his ministry and Guatemala’s national police during the first year of the 2004-2008 administration of conservative President Oscar Berger.” It was that structure, according to the CICIG, which was responsible for extrajudicial killings at two Guatemalan prisons, currently being investigated by the anti-impunity commission. More from Central American Politics, as well as my earlier brief on the matter.
Editor’s Note: As mentioned yesterday, I will be in Haiti until next Tuesday. Daily briefs will be on pause until then but a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday to all. JFS
rock on JFS
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