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Weekly Report - 23 April 2009 (WR-09-16)

Summit of the Americas produces success without consensus

The host of this week's Summit of the Americas, the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, Patrick Manning, was the only signatory to the Declaration of Port of Spain. In that sense, it was even less successful than the last summit in Mar del Plata in 2005, widely considered an unmitigated failure. In every other respect, however, it was more successful, infused with what Manning described as the “spirit of cooperation". There was not much substance, but the style provided a marked contrast to 2005. Then Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez hailed the “utter defeat" of the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); this time he grasped the hand of his US peer Barack Obama, even if he did press into his spare hand a copy of Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano's seminal left-wing polemic.

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