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U.S. foreign aid focus of event
By Andres Oppenheimer.
aoppenheimer@herald.com.
MONTERREY, Mexico - The expected arrival Wednesday of President Fidel Castro
of Cuba for a United Nations summit on poverty is prompting worries among
organizers that he will rob the limelight from President Bush's promise of major
increases in U.S. foreign aid.
Cuba communicated Castro's last-minute decision to attend the summit to
President Vicente Fox of Mexico at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Expressing their concern,
Mexican, U.S. and European officials said privately they fear Castro's
anti-globalization rhetoric will draw attention from a groundbreaking final
document expected to be signed by the United States, Europe and virtually all
developing countries.
Latin American officials were especially worried that Castro may want to
participate in Friday's closed-door retreat for Bush and dozens of other heads
of state to discuss the war on poverty.
''If Castro goes, Bush won't go, and the meeting will be worthless,'' said a
Latin American official involved in the summit's organization.
But Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said Wednesday that
Castro would address the summit in the morning session of today's meeting, and
that the Cuban leader's visit to Monterrey was expected to be ''for a very brief
period.'' Bush is expected to arrive this afternoon.
NOT TOGETHER
Castañeda's words were interpreted by Latin American officials as a
Mexican hope that Castro will be gone by midday, before Bush's arrival, and that
the two leaders will not be in the same room at any time.
''Castro will have it both ways: He will grab the headlines from the world,
and he will do Fox a favor in not requesting to be invited along with everybody
else to the closed-door retreat,'' one Latin American official said. "It
will be his way of telling Fox, "You owe me one.''
Relations between Cuba and Mexico have been tense since an incident last
month in which 21 Cubans broke into the Mexican Embassy in Havana, presumably in
an effort to leave the country, and were evicted by Cuban police at Mexico's
request.
Mexican officials first blamed Miami Cuban exiles for instigating the
would-be refugees' action, but later said privately that the Castro regime might
have encouraged the embassy takeover as a subtle punishment for Mexico's policy
of supporting human rights activists on the island.
Asked whether Castro would meet with Fox, Castañeda told reporters, "We
still don't have the exact arrival and departure times of President Castro, so
we don't know.''
FINAL DOCUMENT
Even if Castro leaves before Bush's arrival, his likely statements
criticizing U.S.-backed free-market policies are expected to take some of the
glitter away from what U.S. and United Nations officials are calling a
groundbreaking final document entitled "The Monterrey Consensus.''
Breaking with decades of sterile arguments in which poor countries demanded
more aid from richer nations, the U.S.-backed document sets new ground rules
under which poor countries will adopt free-market policies, respect human rights
and fight corruption in exchange for greater financial assistance from rich
countries.
As a show of support for the new agreement, the Bush administration has
announced a 50 percent increase in U.S. foreign aid by 2006. The United States
now spends about $10 billion a year in foreign assistance, and is the least
generous donor relative to its economy among rich nations. | 
