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Summit of Americas' final declaration still at stake
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-19 17:07

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -- With at least four heads of state critical of the draft declaration of the Fifth Summit of the Americas, it is still unclear whether all 34 participant countries will sign the document and whether its text will remain unchanged.

Among the strongest critics of the draft declaration are Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The four countries are members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America, an international cooperation organization proposed by Chavez as an alternative to the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Shortly before the summit, the four heads of state criticized the draft, the result of one and a half years of negotiations, that it does not address the necessary measures to curb the effects of the global financial crisis on the developing countries in the Americas -- a crisis which they blame on the United States.

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The most common explanation for the absence of specific clauses dealing with the crisis is that the draft was mostly negotiated before the crisis deepened in September and October last year.

The draft focuses on promoting human prosperity, energy security, environmental sustainability, public security and democratic governance.

On Saturday, Morales added in a press conference another criticism to the draft's text: "If the issue of biofuel is not reviewed, the government of Bolivia will not sign this document. Introducing biofuel policies means to privilege the machines over human life. What will we pick, human life or US machines?"

Morales did not elaborate on the reasons for his opposition to pro-biofuel policies, but critics of sugarcane ethanol, the most common type of biofull, argue the expansion of crops of sugarcane will reduce the land available for the production of food.

The three-day summit opened in Port of Spain on Friday.