Washington Watch

19 October 2005

19 October 2005 Hits: 212

NEW YORK: Bloomberg seeks Latino boost

COLOMBIA: Justice & Peace Law

CUBA: Exile appointed to top Homeland Security post

NICARAGUA: Military aid resumed

NEW YORK
The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is attempting to boost his popularity among Latino voters to ensure he beats his rival, Fernando Ferrer, the first Hispanic to reach the final round of the city's mayoral election, due in three weeks time. Bloomberg, a multimillionaire, Jewish Republican, elected in 2001, has taken a commanding lead over his Puerto Rican Democratic challenger, but lags behind Ferrer among black and Latino voters. Although Bloomberg has had success in tackling crime, Ferrer argues it has come at the cost of improving education and housing in the city creating "two cities, one of the poor and one of the rich". Bloomberg spent 17 October meeting prominent members of New York's Latino community, eating Latino food and taking part in a quiz to test his knowledge of Latino culture in the city.

IMMIGRATION
The US government is planning on pushing ahead with its "guest worker" programme in response to the problem of millions of illegal immigrants. During a Senate committee hearing Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao defended the proposal of President George W Bush which would grant undocumented migrants a maximum six-year period to work in the US. If workers fail to legalise their status by the end of this period they will be deported. Alongside the guest worker programme, Chertoff said his department would boost border security, speed up deportations in the border area and employ more high-tech equipment to spot those crossing the Mexico-US border clandestinely.

COLOMBIA
Human rights activists travelled to Washington on 17 October to encourage the US government to withdraw its support for the Justice & Peace Law because they believe it grants immunity to paramilitaries responsible for human rights violations. The Justice & Peace law, the legal framework for the paramilitary demobilisation process, has been criticised by members of the Movimiento de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado, comprised of 230 trade unions, human rights organisations and families of the disappeared. "We want to make the international community understand about the reality in Colombia. This law_leaves crimes unresolved_strengthens paramilitarism, and was done behind the backs of the victims," Milliret Moncada, of the association of the families of the disappeared, said.

CUBA
Emilio González, 48, was appointed as the head of the Department of Homeland Security's US Citizenship and Immigration Services on 18 October. González is a Cuban exile whose parents fled the country in 1961 when he was four. Citizenship and Immigration Services is responsible for naturalising immigrants, awarding green cards, processing work permits and adjudicating asylum petitions. González, who has a BA in international relations, an MA in Latin American studies and a Phd in international affairs served in the US army for 26 years, rising to the rank of colonel, before joining the Bush administration as director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council in 2002.

NICARAGUA
The government has decided to renew military aid to Nicaragua for 2005 after briefly suspending it because Managua failed to comply with a US request to destroy completely its stockpiles of Sam-7 missiles. The defence minister, Avil Ramírez, said that his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld had agreed to reinstate the military aid, worth about US$2.3m, as a gesture of support for President Enrique Bolaños as he emerges, still weak but intact, from his power struggle with the opposition-dominated national assembly. Ramírez said it was incumbent on the assembly to approve a bill to destroy 651 of the remaining 1,100 missiles as soon as possible but that the US government had agreed that Nicaragua should be allowed to keep the remaining 449 missiles (20% of its original arsenal) for defence purposes.

26 October 2005

26 October 2005 Hits: 205

MIGRATION: 25m people of Mexican descent in US

VENEZUELA: US could veto proposed military sale

AMERICAS SUMMIT: Security worries

NAFTA: Needs revising

BRAZIL: Illegal immigration

MIGRATION:
A Mexican senator, Genaro Borrego Estrada, reckons that there are 25m people of Mexican descent living in the US. This is a quarter of Mexico's population and 63% of the Hispanic population in the US. Borrego claimed, at a conference on Mexican migration on 24 October, that the Mexican population in the US increased by 90% between 1990 and 2004. Borrego, a senator for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, comes from Zacatecas, one of the main sources of Mexican migrant labour for the US.

VENEZUELA:
The US may have an effective veto on the proposed sale of 10 Spanish-built military cargo aircraft to Venezuela. A weekly publication, Defense News, from Washington claimed in its 24 October edition that as the aircraft have US-made radar and optical systems, which contain technologies on the US restricted list, the sale could fall through. When the US sold the components to the Spanish arm of European Aeronautic Defence and Space consortium, which builds the C-295 cargo aircraft, the US made it clear that its permission would have to be obtained for export sales. Defense News said that the sale could be held up indefinitely.

Some European defence companies, notably Alcatel Space in France have already refused to buy US components because of the effective US veto on exports of products which use the components. Some in the US defence industry argue that if the US blocks the sale of the C-295s to Venezuela, more European companies will refuse to buy US components.

AMERICAS SUMMIT:
Security worries about the forthcoming Summit of the Americas, in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 4 and 5 November are mounting. On 24 October a group of seven heavily armed men in military uniforms checked people on the beaches of the resort. The Argentine military said that the men were not part of any military unit. The justice ministry said that it would investigate who they were. The group checked fishermen and families on the beach to the south of the resort, but refused to show any identification.

NAFTA:
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, said on 24 October that the Nafta treaty, should be revised because of the damage it had done to Mexican agriculture. He said that the treaty was not fair to Mexican producers of maize and sugar.

BRAZIL:
The US public security secretary, Michael Chertoff, declared on 25 October that the US government "will expel all illegal immigrants arrested after crossing the [US-Mexican] border". Currently, immigrants arrested trying to enter the US illegally stay in detention camps in the US and, in most cases, are freed by the authorities. The news come two days after the Mexican government imposed its compulsory visa requirements on Brazilian citizens to enter the country. Until now, Brazilians were exempted from visas to enter Mexico. But last year, 31,000 Brazilians were arrested on the US-Mexican border, in comparison with only 21 in the previous five-year period. The US consulates in Brazil give out only 6,000 visas to Brazilian citizens annually. Brazilian authorities are being pressured to crackdown on gangs transporting would-be immigrants. On the same day as Chertoff's announcement, the Brazilian federal police took 30 would-be immigrants waiting in hotels in the centre of town into custody. The operation is part of an ongoing investigation into the routes used by gangs. Would-be immigrants pay up to US$10,000 to be taken to the US.

2 November 2005

02 November 2005 Hits: 92

BUSH: US president accentuates the positive ahead of summit

CUBA: McCarry tours Europe

CUBA: Fidel accepts US hurricane aid

PARAGUAY: FBI office to be opened

EL SALVADOR: Trial of former deputy defence minister begins

BUSH
President George W Bush gave an interview to the Spanish news agency EFE on 1 November as a curtain-raiser for his forthcoming visit to the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 4 and 5 November. The president summarised the state of relations between the US and Latin America as "good", acknowledging that despite their differences, the two regions shared many of the same values. As regards specific countries, Bush said that he hoped that elections in Bolivia would be free and fair: significantly, he made no comment about the likely result or the danger of a win by the current opinion poll frontrunner, Evo Morales. In an oblique reference to Venezuela, he warned about the dangers of countries "altering the normal course of democracy".

The day before, Bush told reporters that "it surprises many people" that he has a good personal relationship with his Brazilian counterpart, President Lula da Silva. According to Bush, despite their differences, both presidents share the "same desire to reduce hunger and poverty" in the Americas. Bush also complained that "parts of the Latin American press" insist on trying to poison their relationship. After the Summit of the Americas, Bush will visit Brazil for the second time in his presidency, the first since Lula came to power in 2003. During the visit Bush will ask for Lula's assistance to consolidate democracy in Latin America. For Bush, Lula is important because of his supposed influence over Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez . Bush tried to downplay US-Brazil differences when asked about the deadlock in the FTAA negotiations, mostly due to opposition from Brazil. According to the US President, bilateral trade between the two countries has increased since 2003. For Bush, the Doha Round of negotiations is more important as they have a global reach. Bush told reporters that the US supports Brazil's demand to reduce global agricultural subsidies, saying that the US complied with the WTO's decision to end cotton subsidies following a petition from the Brazilian government. Bush finished the interview declaring that "the US recognizes" the Brazilian leadership on its mission to bring democracy to Haiti under the UN umbrella.

CUBA
The US coordinator for democratic transition in Cuba, Caleb McCarry, completed a 10-day trip to Europe on 26 October by visiting Spain, the EU member state which has campaigned most vociferously for improved relations with Havana. McCarry, who participated in a forum on Cuba in Madrid and met top officials in the Spanish foreign ministry, told the Spanish news agency Efe that the US did not want to "direct" Cuban transition but to work together with "democratic allies" to bring it about. McCarry began his European tour in the Czech Republic, the EU member state most hostile to a rapprochement with Cuba: "The Czech government has taken special interest and done extraordinarily good things to try and help the Cuban people free themselves from this dictatorship," he said during his visit to Prague. He told the Financial Times on 31 October that "The transition genie is out of the bottle," (in reference to dissident actions inside Cuba) and a "broad consensus" reached with the exiled community. "They are the ones to define a democratic future for Cuba," he said.

CUBA
The government of Fidel Castro accepted an offer of aid from the US on 27 October in the in the wake of Hurricane Wilma, which caused serious flooding in Havana, felling power lines and forcing the evacuation of some 260,000 Cubans across the west of the island. Cuba did not accept economic assistance but rather the offer of a three-person assessment team from the USAID's Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance. It is the first time that Cuba has accepted aid from the US; a clear sign that the Cuban economy is not as buoyant as the official statistics suggest. The offer of assistance was made on 25 October and received a positive response a day later. "This is the first time that they have accepted an offer of assistance - at least in the collective memory banks here at the State Department," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

PARAGUAY
On 26 October the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, visited Asunción to oversee the construction of a permanent FBI office, the eighth in the region, which should be completed by early 2007. Vice-President Luis Castiglioni said that a group of police officers would travel to Washington in December to receive training in how to tackle street crime. The US embassy said that the FBI office was being opened as a result of increased transnational crime, such as kidnapping and drug-trafficking, and that the FBI office would improve collaboration between the two countries. The other FBI offices in the region are located in US embassies in Brasília, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Caracas, Bogotá, Panama City and Mexico City.

EL SALVADOR
The trial of a former deputy defense minister, Nicolás Carranza, on charges of complicity in torture and political assassinations began in Memphis on 31 October. Carranza, who according to an article in the New York Times appeared on the CIA payroll with an annual salary of US$90,000, stands accused by five relatives of former political prisoners of failing to prevent crimes that went on during his command from 1979-1981. The plaintiffs are seeking financial compensation and recognition that Carranza was responsible for human rights abuses. In 2002 a Florida court ordered the defence minister from the same period, Guillermo Garcia, to pay US$54m to three former political prisoners from El Salvador. The trial of Carranza, who became a US citizen in 1991, is expected to last three weeks.

9 November 2005

09 November 2005 Hits: 90

ELECTIONS: Bloomberg win pleases Mexicans

MEXICO: Helicopter crash investigation not published

NICARAGUA: US denies plotting to stop Ortega

PERU: Fujimori did not pass by US en route to Chile

PRIZES: Latin Trade praises Lagos and Kuczynski

ELECTIONS
Mexican organisations in New York welcomed the victory of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the elections on 8 November. Bloomberg beat a Puerto Rican, Ferando Ferrer. Joel Magallán, the director of the Asociación Tepeyac, the biggest community association in the city, said that Hispanic migrants to New York, and Mexican migrants in particular, had been treated much better by the Bloomberg administration than they had been by the previous administration of Rudolph Giuliani. There may be as many as 700,000 Mexicans in New York. Under Giuliani, street peddlers, who are often illegal migrants from Mexico, had been targeted for arrest and then deportation under the famous Zero Tolerance policy. Under Bloomberg, the New York police have been told not to investigate the immigration status of street peddlers. It was significant, Mexican community leaders say, that Bloomberg launched his re-election campaign in Spanish before he launched it in English. On the other side of the US, Hispanics tried to vote against proposals endorsed by Arnold Schwarznegger, the Republican governor of California. Schwarznegger lost two of the five proposals which puts a question mark against his political future. Schwarznegger has been strongly anti-immigrant (which in California means anti-Hispanic) since he took office in 2003.

MEXICO
The Mexican communications and transport ministry said that it would not publish its official investigation into the helicopter accident which cost the security minister, Ramón Martín Huerta, his life on 21 September. The ministry claimed that under Article 13 of the International Civil Aviation Agreement (ICAA), accident reports do not have to be published unless national interests are at stake. The US is tangentially involved in the investigation because the helicopter that crashed was a Bell 412. Under the ICAA the US has the right to be represented in the investigation because it built the helicopter. The general belief among Mexican officials is that pilot error caused the crash, though there have been press claims that Huerta had received death threats from drug barons just before he died.

NICARAGUA
The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, has dismissed remarks by the leader of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), Daniel Ortega, that the US is intent on sabotaging the FSLN's election bid in November 2006. "We cannot knock Mr Ortega out of the game any more than we can any other candidate," Trivelli said. Trivelli insisted that the US had no interest in preventing Ortega running, adding that it was a decision that "the Nicaraguan voters" had to take. Trivelli also excited controversy this week by threatening to remove the US's economic support for the (partisan) supreme court unless it carried out some sweeping reforms. The supreme court described Trivelli's comments as "gringo blackmail".

PERU
The US embassy in Lima said on 8 November that former president Alberto Fujimori did not stop over in the US on his flight from Tokyo to Santiago, Chile on 5 November. According to a number of media reports to have appeared since Fujimori arrived in Chile from Japan, "El Chino" caught a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta before boarding a private jet to Santiago, which also stopped in Tijuana, Mexico on the US border. The US embassy insisted on 7 November that Fujimori does not have a US visa and that if he came through US territory he must have done so under a false name or he would have been arrested. A day later Michael Stanton, the embassy spokesman, confirmed that the plane did not land on US territory.

PRIZES
The Miami-based business magazine Latin Trade awarded Chile's President Ricardo Lagos and Peru's Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski prizes for their handling of their respective countries' economies. Lagos won the “leader of the year" award for his “stellar work" in driving forward the Chilean economy, which has averaged annual growth of 4.3% during Lagos's six years in power. Kuczynski received the award for “most innovative politician" because Peru has experienced 47 consecutive months of growth, mainly while he was serving as economy minister. The prize is likely to strengthen the case for whoever becomes president in April 2006 presenting Kuczynski with the economy and finance portfolio.

16 November 2005

16 November 2005 Hits: 89

CUBA: Does Castro have Parkinson's?

NICARAGUA: Ambassador denounces

IMMIGRATION: How to keep Mexicans at home

AVOCADOS: Mexico exports to US

FREE TRADE: 13th Round begins

CUBA
The Miami Herald ran a piece on 16 November claiming that the CIA had "recently concluded" that Cuba's President Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease and has warned US policymakers "to be ready for trouble if the 79-year-old ruler's health erodes over the next few years". The news report, which appears in a shortened form in several other US dailies, cites "two longtime government officials" (unnamed) as claiming that the CIA is convinced about Castro's medical condition and began briefing senior members of the State Department and legislators about one year ago. The Herald points out that the rumours that Castro suffers from Parkinson's have been floating around since the mid-1990s and that, in 1998, he light-heartedly challenged journalists to a pistol duel at 25 paces to demonstrate that he had steady hands. The paper adds that "There has been no independent confirmation of Castro's illness, or any indication of how the CIA came to its conclusion. The State Department and the CIA declined to comment for this story." Castro recently told Argentina's football legend Diego Maradona during a TV interview that rumours about his ill-health were so frequent that "the day that I die, nobody is going to believe it."

NICARAGUA
Ambassador denounces Alemán amnesty plan The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, said this week that if the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) were successful in getting an amnesty for former president Arnoldo Alemán it would be "anti-democratic". Trivelli said that an amnesty for Alemán would "divide Nicaragua into two classes of people: the political class with immunity and the rest of the Nicaraguan population". He said it would not be healthy for the obvious reason that Alemán had been convicted for corruption. In reference to criticism from Daniel Ortega that the US was seeking to prevent his party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), from coming to power, Trivelli said "we are ready to cooperate in future with whatever government that is democratically elected". He did, however, seem to qualify this immediately by adding "_ that has a responsible economic policy and that is ready is ready to cooperate with us on security issues".

IMMIGRATION
Susan Kaufman Purcell, from the University of Miami, argued at a conference on 15 November in Monterrey, Nuevo León, that Mexico had to do more to make its economy perform better and thus discourage people from emigrating to the US. The conference, which involved businessmen as well as academics from both sides of the border, concluded that migration was likely to be a big issue in both the forthcoming Mexican presidential and congressional elections in July 2006 and the mid-term US elections in November. The conference was organised by the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, arguably Mexico's top university, and the Woodrow Wilson Center from the US.

AVOCADOS
The agriculture ministry expects Mexico to export 130,000t of avocados to the US in the 2005/06 season. The exports will be worth around US$250m. The overwhelming bulk of Mexico's avocados (80%) are grown in Michoacán. The US allows Mexican avocados to be imported into all but three states. The Mexican agriculture ministry hopes that the three holdouts (California, Florida and Hawaii) will allow Mexican avocado imports from 2007. In 2004, Mexico exported 112,000t of avocados to the US: the trade was worth US$230m.

FREE TRADE
On 14 November delegates from the US, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador began the 13th round of free trade talks. The chief negotiators expressed confidence that they would reach an agreement by 18 November, but the talks could be extended by up to four days if necessary. According to one Peruvian delegate significant progress has been made on one of the main sticking points: intellectual property rights, particularly as regards pharmaceutical patents. Agriculture is another area of difficulty. Washington hopes the pact will help in the fight against illegal drugs, while creating new US business opportunities in three countries with a total population of 84.3 million and combined economies approaching US$500bn annually. A deal also would provide a. counterweight to attempts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to dominate the Andean region politically and economically. If they fail to reach a deal, the 14th round of talks will be held at the start of December, prior to the next round of WTO negotiations in Hong Kong.

23 November 2005

23 November 2005 Hits: 217

MEXICO: Border wall

VENEZUELA: New policy for Chávez

OIL: Imports from Venezuela drop

DRUGS: US warns on Dominican drugs

BORDER WALL

Duncan Hunter, an influential Californian Republican congressman who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has proposed building two high walls along the border with Mexico as a way of curbing illegal migration. Hunter reckons that the cost would be at least US$1m a mile, though his critics say that it could be as high as US$4m a mile. The border is almost 2,000 miles long.

Most analysts in Washington do not believe that the wall will be built. The problem is that the wall idea is one of the few on the table to deal with illegal migration. On 18 November, the Miami Herald, a newspaper that addresses one of the most influential Hispanic lobbies in the US, editorialised against Hunter's wall.

Washington analysts say that Hunter's proposal, which has some support inside (but more outside) congress shows how President George W Bush's failure to send his long promised immigration reform bill to congress is creating a space in which dottier ideas can take root.

VENEZUELA

The US government seems to have a new policy for dealing with President Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian revolution: ignoring provocation. First, the US studiously avoided being sucked into the spat between Mexico and Venezuela in mid-November when Chávez insulted the Mexican president, Vicente Fox. The spat started when President Hugo Chávez made some intemperate comments, on 13 November, about President Vicente Fox's behaviour at the Summit of the Americas. Chávez called Fox an "imperialist puppy". The spat spun out of control and culminated in both countries recalling their ambassadors on 14 November. The US State Department refused to endorse Fox, who Chávez said, accurately, had supported the US at the summit.

More significantly, both the State Department and the US ambassador to Caracas, William Brownfield, refused to comment after President Chávez called President George W. Bush a genocidal maniac on 17 November. President Chávez repeated the insult on 20 November, again without any US official response.

The third example of the new policy is the US's low key response to Chávez 's policy of providing poor US citizens with heating oil and other fuel in Massachusetts and New York through Venezuela's wholly owned US refining operation, Citgo. The State Department refused to comment on what Citgo was doing.

OIL

US oil imports from Venezuela fell by 20% in September to 1.03m bpd. In August imports had been 1.29m bpd. The US Department of Energy said that the fall was only 3%, when measured year-on-year. Venezuela is the US's fourth biggest oil supplier after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, each of which provides the US with about 1.2m bpd. US crude oil imports came to 8.98m bpd in September down by 1.36m bpd from August.

DRUGS

Hans Hertell, the US ambassador to the Dominican Republic issued a warning on the surge in drug trafficking in the country on 22 November. Hertell said that there had been a visible increase in the volume of drugs going through the country. On 8 November a consignment of 442.5kg of cocaine was seized in Santo Domingo. A week earlier 128kg of cocaine was seized in Puerto Plata: the drugs were hidden in a consignment of trousers destined for the US. On 29 October, three Colombians and a Venezuelan were arrested trying to smuggle 39kg of heroin into the country.

30 November 2005

30 November 2005 Hits: 218

URUGUAY: Cuba's entry into Mercosur

BRAZIL: Immigration policy

VENEZUELA: Spanish arms deal

VENEZUELAN ELECTIONS: Charges of US interference

MEXICO: Bush visits border areas.

URUGUAY

The Investments Protection Agreement recently signed between Uruguay and United States will go before congress on 5 December. The bilateral agreement would safeguard foreign business investments in each other's countries while promoting trade and exports. There is some opposition to the agreement amongst members of the ruling party; the US might start to get cold feet about it soon too. This week Uruguay started to push for Cuba to be incorporated into Mercosur. Uruguayan Foreign Affairs minister Reynaldo Gargano said in Montevideo on 29 November that Cuba's accession to Mercosur could be "very important" in trying to "overcome" the effects of the US trade embargo. He added that "The possible 4 + 1 agreement with Venezuela would be very useful for Cuba". He also dismissed the suggestion that reaching out to Cuba could jeopardise Uruguay's relations with the US: "Uruguay trades with whoever it pleases," Gargano said.

BRAZIL

President George W Bush praised the US government's policy against illegal immigration citing Brazilian immigrants as an example during a speech in Tucson, Arizona. Bush said that "the efficiency of [the US government's immigration policy] was successfully tested with Brazilian immigrants in the Rio Grande". According to the US President, the extradition of Brazilians caught trying to cross the US-Mexican border reduced by 90% the number of new arrests of illegal immigrants in the region. For Bush "when a would-be illegal immigrant knows he will be caught and sent home, he will be less inclined to try it again". Before the new policy was introduced, people caught trying to enter the US illegally would be freed and had to come to the courts two months afterwards. The majority, however, would not go to their hearings and instead stayed in illegally. The US National Security Department said that the number of foreign nationals deported had fallen by half in 2005 in relation to the previous year due to the government's new policy. The Brazilian vice-Council in Houston, Flávia Passos, said that until 11 November 48,483 Brazilians had been arrested by the US police trying to enter the country illegally.

VENEZUELA

US reservations about Spain's recent sale of US$2bn worth of military equipment, including transport planes and frigates, was undermined on 28 November by the publication of figures showing that Venezuela was the second greatest purchaser of US arms after Colombia in Latin America. Both the State Department and the US ambassador to Spain had questioned the legality of Venezuela's deal with Spain, arguing that the European country might need a US export licence to sell equipment with US-made components.

However, on 28 November the State Department and the Pentagon published the value of US arms sales to Venezuela. Although the two figures differed, both were significant and, more importantly, appeared to be growing. The State Department website stated that in 2004 Venezuela bought US$24.5m worth of military equipment including electronics, F-16 components, generators and communication gear. Figures from the Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) claimed that in fact sales to Venezuela were only US$14.3m in 2004. Nevertheless, this marked an increase from 2003 (US$6.8m) and 2002 (US$3.2m). In 2004 Colombia bought US$105m worth of US military equipment. Between 2001 and 2004 the US sold Latin America US$2.1bn worth of military goods.

VENEZUELAN ELECTIONS

On 28 November the president of the Venezuelan national assembly, Nicolás Maduro, claimed that the US was interfering in the country's 4 December legislative elections via the citizens' rights organisation Súmate. Maduro said that the US embassy, acting through Súmate, was attempting to generate distrust in the electoral process and boost the abstention rate. Súmate was the group principally responsible for organising the recall referendum on President Hugo Chávez in August 2004; it received around US$31,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by the US congress. One of its leaders, Maria Machado, recently traveled to the White House to meet President George W Bush.

MEXICO

US President George W Bush called the Mexican border a "dangerous area" during a visit to the border town of El Paso on 29 November. The US authorities underlined the danger by closing the border for the three hours of Bush's visit. The Mexican government supported the US measures by deploying troops and policemen on its side of the border. The president said that he wanted to construct a "virtual barrier" monitored by infra-red cameras and pilotless aircraft. Bush was speaking on the second (and final) day of a tour of border areas. In Arizona, where anti-immigrant feelings are running high, Bush said that he wanted to combine the US traditional respect for immigrants with upholding the rule of law. In Texas, he said that he expected to send his proposal to offer migrants guestworker visas to congress in January.

07 December 2005

07 December 2005 Hits: 101

MEXICO: Mexico objects to US migration policy

ARGENTINA: US investment encouraged

HONDURAS: Diplomat promises aid and investment from the US

BOLIVIA: Workers march for free trade

CHILE: US gives permission to sell used F-19s to Chile

MEXICO
On 7 December Mexican legislators signed a statement denouncing the "hardline immigration measures which the US adopted unilaterally on 28 November". On that day President George Bush visited the Mexican border town of El Paso, where he emphasised his desire to strengthen border control between Mexico and the US. Bush said that the border was under threat not only from terrorists, but also drug-traffickers. The president of Mexico's human rights commission, Miguel Sadot, expressed his concern about the new US measures, and asked that it consider a programme which allowed for the migration of temporary workers.

ARGENTINA
The minister for federal planning, public investment, and services, Julio de Vido, said that he wants to "open all doors" to US investment in Argentina "so that they can sell to Argentina, invest, and have all the profitability that they want". De Vido, and a delegation of business people, participated in an event in New York, organised by the Council of the Americas, in which they met 200 representatives from the financial and business world to discuss US investment in Argentina. The US currently invests US$12.1bn in the country.

HONDURAS
The US undersecretary of state for public and foreign affairs, Karen Hughes, met the candidate for the opposition Partido Liberal, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, in Honduras. Zelaya is the virtual president elect (the final count from the presidential elections on 27 November is still not complete). On 6 December Hughes investigated the damage caused by recent natural disasters and the reconstruction projects in place. She was met at San Pedro Sula airport by the Honduran President, Ricardo Maduro, Vice-President Alberto Díaz Lobo and other public officials. Hughes, who was accompanied by a group of US investors, indicated that the US State Department was not only interested in helping Honduras, but also in promoting US investment in the country. Hughes also visited Guatemala, where she announced that the US would not be offering a TPS (temporary protected status) agreement to the 400,000 Guatemalan immigrants in the US.

BOLIVIA
More than 5000 Bolivian workers marched through the streets of La Paz on 6 December, calling for the country to sign a free trade agreement with the US. The workers, who principally work for large manufacturing companies, arrived outside the US embassy where they met trade union representatives. The marchers, who work in textiles, wood, jewellery and leather companies believe that they will be most affected if Bolivia does not sign the FTA with the US by 31 December 2006, as their products are mostly exported to the US. According to government officials, FTA negotiations have not stopped, but will be resolved once the new administration is settled after the elections on 18 December.

CHILE
The US ambassador in Chile, Craig Kelly, confirmed that the defence department is allowing the Netherlands to sell 18 F-16 warplanes to Chile. The first delivery is expected from the Netherlands in 2006. The sale is worth US$7.5m. The US-based Lockheed Martin company will offer the spare parts and technology to rearm and upgrade the planes, built in the 1980s, for another 20 years of operation. However, sources from the Chilean Air Force (FACH) and the government commented that no final decision has been made on the purchase of the planes yet.

14 December 2005

14 December 2005 Hits: 206

GUATEMALA: US discusses TPS petition

VENEZUELA: US to receive discounted oil

HAITI: Helicopters requested for elections

BRAZIL: Lula seeks Bush meeting to save WTO negotiations

CUBA: Food sales

GUATEMALA

The Guatemalan foreign minister, Jorge Briz, met US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in Washington on 13 December to discuss the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) agreement for thousands of Guatemalans in the US. Briz also discussed closer bilateral cooperation on issues such as security, the fight against drug-trafficking and trade. "We have to be very clear on migration in the US - it is a complex issue" Briz said. "The US has reiterated that it is analysing the matter, and that it wants to cooperate with Guatemala, especially with those affected by the devastation caused by Hurricane Stan". Briz said that "we have put the issue of Guatemalan immigration on the US political map". Briz presented a project to the US which would help to regulate the immigration of Guatemalans to America by allowing them to work there for three-year periods. It is currently estimated that 1.2m Guatemalans live in the US, of which 60% are undocumented.

VENEZUELA

Citgo, the US oil company owned by Venezuela's state-owned Pdvsa, is offering cheap oil to poor people in the US in what critics say is a ploy to boost President Hugo Chávez 's image in the US. Citgo officials insist the discounted heating oil programme is simply a corporate initiative. The company has earmarked up to 15% of its heating oil production, about 45 million gallons, to be distributed to low-income homes in the US snow belt at discounts of up to 40%. Citgo has already sold discounted oil to homes in the Bronx. New York Republican Jose Serrano, who helped to broker the oil deal said: "It is absolutely shameful that no American oil company has similarly stepped forward to help communities struggling with high energy costs during the winter, especially in view of their record profits last month." The Bush administration has said little about the programme. US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that Citgo is a US company "helping Americans in need. That is a good thing, that is as it should be."

HAITI

The UN has made an urgent request to the Pentagon for 10 US helicopters to provide logistical support during the Haitian elections, which are scheduled for 8 January. The head of the UN mission in Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdés, has also requested US$16m to help finance the elections. The UN did not request US troops as, somewhat optimistically, it is banking on its stabilisation force Minustah keeping a lid on violence. The helicopters are needed to help transport ballots and other materials to remote areas. The Haitian elections were originally scheduled for November but have now been pushed back until January, with an anticipated run-off in February. These delays have caused a budget deficit of US$16m brought on by unanticipated staffing demands. The State department has said that they hope Valdés can revise the US$16m figure before they make their decision.

BRAZIL
President Lula da Silva called his US counterpart, George W Bush, on 8 December to propose a meeting of global leaders aimed at unblocking the negotiations over the reduction of agricultural subsidies in developed countries. Lula decided to call Bush in an attempt to save the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) talks in Hong Kong this week. He made the same proposal to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, a week earlier. According to the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, Lula proposed holding a meeting of global leaders in January. President Bush, said Amorim, considered the Brazilian proposal "excellent". Amorim went on and said that both Presidents "agreed that the Hong Kong conference should not be seen as the end of negotiations [over trade liberalisation proposals] of the Doha Round". The Brazilians suggested a meeting, possibly in Europe, with leaders of the G-8 plus eight other leading developing nations. Lula and Bush agreed to "increase the pressure on the European Union" in order to advance the negotiations. Bush praised the Brazilian initiative and ended the conversation saying that [in order for negotiations to progress] "some countries need to leave their entrenched positions".

CUBA
The governors of the US states of Maine and Virginia signed multi-million dollar trade deals with Cuba's state-run food agency Alimport on 12 December. The contracts are worth US$50m and include seed potatoes, fish and dairy cattle. Maine Governor John E. Baldacci met Cuba's President Fidel Castro to sign the deal. "We are working within the existing framework, trying to show other states the ability to trade with Cuba," Baldacci told a news conference.

21 December 2005

21 December 2005 Hits: 105

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: US neglecting Latin America

CAFTA: US ready for launch

PANAMA: US ambassador criticises “judicial terrorism"

BOLIVIA: Rice comments on Morales

PERU: Flores tours

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The president of the US thinktank Inter-American Dialogue, Peter Hakim, contributed a piece entitled “Is Washington Losing Latin America?" to the January 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs magazine. He opens with the controversial assertion that “Relations between the United States and Latin America today are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War." Similar statements seem to be made at the end of every year but Hakim goes some way to substantiating his claim.

There is nothing new in the argument that relations between the US and Latin America “have seriously deteriorated" since 11 September 2001. But Hakim provides plentiful examples of how US policy on Latin America has drifted “without much steam or direction". He blames Washington for its “muddled and unworkable immigration rules"; for its inconsistency (“Most Latin Americans were dumbfounded by US actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay [after] the US government has long scolded Latin American countries for their violations of human rights and their shabby judicial procedures"); and for its pandering to powerful domestic interest groups by refusing to cut agricultural subsidies to push forward the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

However, Hakim does not exempt Latin America from criticism. “Too often, Latin American governments have only grudgingly cooperated with the United States and one another. Some of the region's leaders have turned to populist and anti-American rhetoric to win supporters and votes". He says that “democratic progress is faltering in the region in large part because of the dismal economic and social performance in country after country". A meaningful economic relationship between the US and Latin America, he implies, is undermined by the region's “low educational standards, paltry investment in technology and infrastructure, pitifully low rates of saving, derisory levels of tax collection, and politically divisive inequalities."

Hakim devotes some time to the emergence of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez as “a vexing and potentially dangerous adversary", pursuing an anti-US agenda against which the US has failed to come up with a strategy; he also talks at length about China's growing influence in Latin America. He dismisses the threat of both developments by arguing (fairly plausibly) that “nearly every Latin American country still sees its future as being linked to the United States and wants to strengthen its relations with Washington". Hakim concludes that “There is little reason to expect that US relations with Latin America will improve soon_ More likely, they will get worse". However, much of the article suggests that this bleak conclusion could be avoided, and the US could cultivate a much more positive relationship with Latin America, if US decision makers simply paid more attention to the views of Latin American officials. “Today, Washington seems to notice only those developments in Latin America that look like direct challenges to its own interests, such as the growing influence of Chávez , the expanding presence of China, or the reemergence of (Daniel) Ortega (in Nicaragua)."

CAFTA
The US is prepared to implement the free-trade agreement with the Dominican Republic and Central America (Cafta-DR) as soon as those countries "have taken sufficient steps to complete their commitments" under the terms of the trade pact, Christin Baker, a spokesperson of the Office of the US Trade Representative, said on 19 December. Baker conceded that Cafta-DR would not be up and running on 1 January as planned. She said the US aimed "to start as close as possible" to that date. “We will move forward as long as at least one country is prepared, and will accommodate new entrants as they become ready," Baker said. Cafta-DR has been ratified by all of the signatory nations except Costa Rica, which is procrastinating over a fiscal reform bill it wants put in place before the trade agreement begins.

PANAMA
The US ambassador in Panama City, William Eaton, criticised corruption in Panama this week. Eaton described corruption within the system as “judicial terrorism" after announcing that the US had decided to cancel the visa of Panamanian supreme court judge Winston Spadafora. The embassy would say no more than that the visa was revoked under anti-corruption laws. In November the Panamanian civic group, Alianza Ciudadana Pro Justicia, asked the national assembly to investigate Spadafora and seven of his colleagues for ignoring laws, disregarding legal precedents, and accepting bribes in cases that resulted in Colombian money-launderers and gun-runners walking free. President Martín Torrijos reacted angrily to Eaton's comments. “We are an independent country, we are a sovereign country and we do not think that any foreign ambassador should interfere in the domestic politics of our country," he said.

BOLIVIA
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said that the US would reserve judgement on Evo Morales, the leader of the coca growers who won the Bolivian elections on 18 December. Rice said in an interview with CNN on 19 December, “We'll do what we do with every new government or president elect, which is to say that we'll look to the behaviour of the Bolivian government to determine the course of US-Bolivian relations. We have good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin America. The issue for us is will the new Bolivian government govern democratically? Are they open to cooperation that, in economic terms, will undoubtedly help the Bolivian people, because Bolivia cannot be isolated from the international economy? And so from our point of view, this is a matter of behaviour." Rice refused to be drawn on Evo Morales's policy to legalise coca-leaf.

PERU
US Lourdes Flores, the frontrunner in Peru's presidential race, concluded a three-day tour of the US last week by issuing an ominous warning about the rise of populist movements and the threat to democracy in the Andean region. Flores said that shadows were hanging over Ecuador and Bolivia while it was pitch black in Venezuela. She said that Peru (provided she wins April's elections) and Colombia were the focus of light in the Andean region and that working with President Alvaro Uribe she could help stabilise the region. Flores, who is running for the conservative Unidad Nacional coalition, was the runaway leader ahead of the elections but she is being pegged back by the nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala, whose inward looking brand of military populism, she argues, would stick Peru into reverse. Flores travelled to Washington and Miami during her tour and met the assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, Tom Shannon, the managing director of the IMF, Rodrigo Rato, the president of the Inter-American development bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, and representatives of other financial entities.

4 January 2006

04 January 2006 Hits: 85

BOLIVIA: US stays cool

IMMIGRATION: White House dodges wall issue

CAFTA: US postpones implementation

NICARAGUA: US tried to unite Right

ECUADOR:US makes oblique threat over Oxy dispute

BOLIVIA
Both the White House and the State Department are remaining calm about the imminence of an administration headed by President Evo Morales. The White House line, expressed on 2 January, is: “We congratulate the people of Bolivia for moving forward on a democratic election. We look forward to working with the new government. Our relationship will be based on their commitment to democracy and the principles that we hold dear in this hemisphere." The State Department line, also articulated on 3 January, is equally conciliatory: “We are ready to work with any democratically elected government in the hemisphere. Our only concerns are that democratically elected governments govern in a democratic manner. We are certainly willing to work with the Bolivian Government, as well as other governments in the hemisphere. In particular, we have in the past had good cooperation with the Bolivian Government on anti-narcotics efforts. We'll see what kinds of policies President Morales pursues and, based on that, we'll see what kind of relationship the United States and Bolivia will have." The State Department spokesman was asked, specifically, about Morales's apparent alignment with Cuba and Venezuela. He replied: “We'll see what kinds of policies he pursues. We'll see, once the challenges of governing are before him, what kinds of policies he chooses to pursue and what kinds of relationships he chooses to cultivate within the hemisphere. So we'll wait and see. Like I said, it doesn't matter to us what kind of democratic government a country may have. If they're willing to work on the positive agenda that we have outlined for the hemisphere, then certainly we can have very close relations with governments across a political spectrum."

IMMIGRATION
The White House is trying to distance itself from the decision by the House of Representatives to approve the construction of a wall along bits of the border between the US and Mexico. The White House said on 3 January that the enthusiasm for wall-building is a local US response to the whole immigration issue. President George W Bush argues that he wants to fix the problem and is drawing up a comprehensive plan for reform.

CAFTA
The US postponed the implementation of the free trade agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic (Cafta-DR) on 31 December. The treaty was due to come into effect on 1 January 2006. The US is now looking at February 1 and March 1 as the next targets for implementing the agreement. The US Trade Representative claims that none of its partners are in a position to implement the treaty in full. All but Costa Rica have ratified the agreement in their respective congresses. The USTR points out that El Salvador expects to send the enabling law to congress next month and the Dominican Republic only expects the start the legal process in the middle of the year.

NICARAGUA
On 3 January the US ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, met potential liberal (rightwing) presidential candidates to discuss the Right's unification ahead of elections in November. The US has repeatedly backed the unification of the Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC) on the condition that it exludes Arnoldo Aléman, the ex-president imprisoned on corruption charges. Eduardo Montealegre, from the Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense-Partido Conservador (ALN-PC) told the press that he had spoken to Trivelli about the possibility of holding primaries in May to select a single liberal candidate. On 23 December, Trivelli also told the local press that the US "would not have any problem" with a left-of-centre government in Nicaragua, just as it had been able to maintain good relations with left-of-centre governments in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Trivelli was referring to Herty Lewites, who was expelled from the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in 2005, not FSLN leader Daniel Ortega.

ECUADOR
On 2 January, Larry Memmot, the head of the economic interests section of the US embassy in Quito said that he hoped the Ecuadorean government's dispute with the US oil firm Occidental could be resolved through negotiation. Petroecuador, the state-owned oil company, and Ecuador's attorney-general accuse Occidental of having violated the terms of its contract by transferring 40% of its shares in the "Bloque 15" oilfield to the Canadian company Encana in 2001 without informing the energy ministry. The Ecuadorean government said in November that Oxy had 60 days to finish its activities in the country. Memmott said that the dispute should be resolved financially, as stipulated by the terms of the contract the oil company has with the government. He added that if Oxy was forced out of Ecuador the loss for Oxy and the country would be tremendous. "The damage to the prestige of Ecuador would be incalculable," he said, adding that although the Oxy case would not affect the negotations for a free trade agreement between the US and Ecuador, it could affect its subsequent passage in the US congress.

11 January 2006

11 January 2006 Hits: 226

CUBA: Behind Kennedy's assassination?

REGION: Free Trade

MEXICO: Immigration

MEXICO: Anti-drug czar backs wall to keep out drugs and illegal immigrants

PARAGUAY: Banking scandal

CUBA
A German documentary film, Rendezvous with Death, is claiming that Cuba was behind the 1963 assassination of US President John Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. The documentary, by Wilfried Huismann, was shown to journalists in Berlin on 11 January. It claims that Oswald travelled to Mexico City by bus in September 1963, seven weeks before Kennedy was shot, and met Cuban agents at the Cuban embassy who provided him with US$6,500. The documentary relies heavily on the testimony of Oscar Marino, a former Cuban agent, who told Huismann that Oswald volunteered for the assassination. "Oswald was a dissident. He hated his country. ... Oswald offered to kill Kennedy. He was so full of hate, he had the idea. We used him. ... He was a tool," Marino said.

Laurence Keenan, a member of the FBI, also appears on the documentary: he says he was sent to Mexico City immediately after Kennedy's death to investigate a possible Cuban connection and was recalled after just three days. He says he thought Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson cancelled the investigation because if the links to Cuba were proven he would come under massive pressure to invade the island, shortly after the brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis. Alexander Haig, a US military adviser and later secretary of state, also appears: he quotes Johnson as saying, "We simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president."

REGION
There have been a number of setbacks to US trade policy in 2006. Firstly, the free-trade agreement between the US, the Central American nations and the Dominican Republic (DR-Cafta) did not get underway as scheduled on 1 January. None of the signatory nations are ready to implement the agreement. Secondly, Regina Vargo, the US Trade Representative's lead negotiator for a free-trade agreement with the Andean countries announced on 9 January that she will quit on 13 January. Her resignation comes at a key point in the negotiations: the US team will hold the next round of talks with Colombia and Ecuador on 23 January. Finally, on 10 January, Panama's agriculture minister, Laurentino Cortizo, resigned over his concerns that Panama would be compelled to compromise its food health standards in order to clinch a free-trade deal with the US. Cortizo excited controversy by insisting that the trade deal would mean relaxing phytosanitary measures, which could put Panama at the mercy of diseases such as foot and mouth, mad cow disease and bird flu. The US agriculture department rejected the criticism, saying that the US had some of the most stringent food safety standards in the world and, if anything, a trade deal would improve standards. Panama is in the midst of its ninth round of negotiations with the US; the latest round is being held in Washington.

MEXICO
On 10 January, Tom Tancredo, a prominent anti-immigration Republican congressman from Colorado, accused Mexico and its co-signatories of the criticism of the tough new anti-immigration bill approved by the House of Representatives on 16 December of wanting to weaken US security. Tancredo is a prominent supporter of the tough bill, proposed by James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. Tancredo said that if Mexico and the other countries (all of Central America, Colombia and the Dominican Republic) persist in lobbying against the bill, which has yet to be approved by the US senate, they risk doing "permanent" damage to their relationship with the US. On 9 January, foreign ministers from the Latin American countries signed a communique asking the US to look again at its immigration policy, in particular, the proposal to build a wall along parts of the Mexican border.

MEXICO WALL PROPOSAL
The US anti-drug czar, John Walters signalled on 9 January that the US administration supported the idea of building a wall along the border with Mexico to keep out illegal migrants. Walters, who is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said that there were areas along the border where "physical or technological" barriers would be effective in keeping out drugs and illegal migrants.

PARAGUAY
A judge in New York ordered US$16m to be returned to Paraguay from a high yield account at Citibank in New York on 6 January. The money had been diverted to New York when two private sector banks were rescued by the Paraguayan central bank under the previous administration, headed by President Luis González Macchi. The three people involved in fraud, which also involved the Paraguayan Humanitarian Foundation, were fined US$6m. The case has been running since 2000, when the fraud was discovered. González Macchi has been accused by people involved in the scam of knowing all about it.

18 January 2006

18 January 2006 Hits: 106

ARGENTINA: Shannon visits

PANAMA: Inconclusive free trade talks

WASHINGTON LOBBYISTS: Mexico picks Allyn & Co.

COLOMBIA: DEA denies corruption

MEXICO: US pooh-poohs military incursions

ARGENTINA
Thomas Shannon, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, visited Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay over the last week. The main talking point, however, was Bolivia. "We are waiting for the opportunity to sit down with the president-elect of Bolivia and with his government to determine what type of relations we can have," Shannon said. In his visit to Argentina on 17 January, Morales said "We are planning on undertaking profound change in Bolivia, but we will do so democratically. If the empire wants to support us, the support will be welcome. With the United States, we want agreements, but not subordination." He added, "Not only are we going to respect private property, we are going to protect private property. This is important both for public and private investment." Shannon could not say enough positive things during his meeting with Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner. He said that meeting Kirchner was "a pleasant bonus", Argentina's decision to pay back its debt with the IMF was "a good thing", and relations between the two countries were "excellent". He even denied that the fractious Summit of the Americas, held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in October 2005 had damaged relations, claiming instead that it had paved the way for a much-needed debate over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

PANAMA
The ninth round of free-trade talks between Panama and the US in Washington this week concluded without agreement. The talks broke down on differences over phytosanitary and animal-sanitary issues. Panama's agriculture minister Laurentino Cortizo resigned just before the talks began over his concerns that Panama would be compelled to compromise its food health standards in order to clinch a free-trade deal with the US. He uttered dark warnings about exposing Panama to diseases such as foot and mouth, mad cow disease and bird flu.

WASHINGTON LOBBYISTS
Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, has hired Rob Allyn as the Mexican government's public relations adviser in its campaign to lobby the US government to drop the proposal, passed by the House of Representatives on 16 December, to build a wall along parts of the border between Mexico and the US. The House bill also criminalises undocumented migrants settled in the US. Allyn has good connections with President George W Bush: he worked for the president when he was running, successfully, for the governorship of Texas and he also worked on the first Bush presidential campaign. Allyn also worked on Fox's presidential campaign in 2000. Mexico organised a meeting of Central American (and Colombia's and the Dominican Republic's) foreign ministers on 9 January to coordinate a strategy to stop the wall.

COLOMBIA
The US Drug Enforcement Administration denied on 16 January that any of its agents had been corrupted by local drug gangs, as the local media suggested. A DEA spokesman, Garison Courtney, told Radio Caracol that the US Defense Department had investigated the claims and closed the case some time ago. The DEA's statement came after the authoritative Colombian weekly newsmagazine, Semana, published a confidential document, written by Thomas M Kent, a lawyer in the telephone-tapping department of the US Justice Department in December 2004. The document said that the US Justice Department had investigated several DEA agents working in Colombia for serious corruption. According to the Justice Department's report several DEA agents were on drug gang's payrolls and some had been involved in killing informers. Other DEA agents had helped the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia launder drug money. The DEA complement in Colombia is the second biggest outside the US, behind only Mexico. Around 35 agents and a 100 support staff work for the DEA in Colombia.

MEXICO
The US Border Patrol confirmed on 16 January that it had issued a warning to agents about incursions by Mexican soldiers across the US border. The Border Patrol said that the warning was to give agents guidance about how to act if they detected an incursion and how to document it. The Border Patrol said that it has been known for Mexican soldiers to stray into the US in areas where the border is not clearly marked and US military units have wandered in Mexico by mistake. The Mexican embassy in Washington strongly denied that any Mexican troops had crossed the border. The embassy said that the Mexican military has a standing order of not going within one mile of the border. The embassy said that drug smugglers often wear military uniforms, and this may have confused the US Border Patrol.

25 January 2006

25 January 2006 Hits: 199

CUBA: Castro fights war of words with US Interests Section

BRAZIL: Amorim criticises US veto

BOLIVIA: Bit of a poser

VENEZUELA: Senator McCain implies Chávez is a "wacko"

MEXICO: More Capitol Hill pressure for stronger borders

GUATEMALA: Craddock considers boosting aid

CUBA
President Fidel Castro addressed a large rally outside the US Interests Section in Havana on 24 January to protest against what Castro called the "deliberate" attempts to free the anti-Castro activist, Luis Posada Carriles, who is being held in Texas on immigration charges. The march coincided with the end of a 90-day period for additional evidence to be filed in Posada's case. While Castro spoke, the US Interests Section projected quotes from famous champions of liberty such as Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. Castro stopped to look up at the building: "They already turned on the little sign - the cockroaches are brave," he said. Earlier in the week, Castro made another attempt to demonstrate that his anti-Americanism only applies to the Bush administration. He offered free eye-surgery to 150,000 poor American citizens under a health initiative called "Operación Milagro". He said Cuba would supply the aircraft to pick people up from Florida, and put them up and treat them for free.

BRAZIL
The Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, told the newspaper Folha de São Paulo on 22 January that the US decision to veto the sale of Embraer planes to Venezuela was "absurd, without justification and against international rules". Amorim's comments come days after the US government decided to bar the sale of 36 Embraer planes to the Venezuelan government. The planes are manufactured in Brazil but use US technology. Amorim told Folha that the Brazilian government was trying to resolve the matter diplomatically. The minister said the Itamaraty - the Brazilian foreign ministry - had sent letters to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the US trade secretary, Robert Portman, requesting that they reconsider the decision. So far, however, the US response has been "unsatisfactory". Amorim also said that the Brazilian government is considering taking the matter to the WTO.

BOLIVIA
The initial foreign policy statement from the new Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, that he would like to negotiate a free trade agreement with the US, was a major surprise and presents a dilemma for US policymakers. Before the election the US ambassador to Bolivia had held out the prospect of a deal: during the election campaign, however, the eventual winner, Evo Morales, made a series of strongly anti-US statements. The US has yet to negotiate an FTA with a government with which it has major political differences. Currently, Bolivia has observer status at the negotiations over an Andean free trade deal with the US. Peru clinched a free trade agreement before Christmas and Ecuador and Colombia are about to start negotiations for, what they hope, will be better terms than the Peruvians obtained. The US sent Thomas Shannon, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs to attend President Evo Morales's investiture, but there were no substantive talks.

VENEZUELA
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and Vietnam vet who lost the Republican presidential nomination to George W Bush in 2000, said, on Fox News on 22 January, that the US should develop alternative energy strategies to avoid being held hostage by Iranian mullahs and "wackos in Venezuela". McCain did not refer, directly, to President Hugo Chávez as a wacko. Chávez threatened on 13 January to halt Venezuelan oil exports to the US. Venezuela is the US's fourth biggest oil supplier.

MEXICO
Senator John Kyl, a rightwing Republican from Arizona said on 24 January that he is planning to hold a hearing on incursions from Mexico and border violence on 1 March in a senate judicial subcommittee. He is planning to ask US Border Patrol officers to testify. His move follows claims by another Republican, Tom Tancredo, a congressman from Colorado, that a Mexican army Humvee had crossed the border on 23 January to help a drug smuggling gang. Kyl has asked the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to investigate the incident. Another Arizona Republican, Rick Renzi, a congressman, wrote to the State department in mid-January asking for border states to be allowed to form their own border guard units, funded by the federal government.

GUATEMALA
The head of the US Southern Command, Bantz J. Craddock, visited Guatemala on 24 January. He visited the northeastern jungle department of Petén to oversee the destruction of 25 clandestine landing strips used by drug traffickers. The government says the strips were used by planes coming in from Colombia, with the drugs then travelling overland into Mexico. Craddock will meet defence minister Francisco Bermúdez and interior minister Carlos Vielman to consider increasing aid to combat drug gangs which President Oscar Berger says are working with mara gangs and are responsible for the alarming increase in violent crime in Guatemala.

1 February 2006

01 February 2006 Hits: 240

CUBA: Propaganda war

MEXICAN BORDER: Sensenbrenner accuses Derbez

COLOMBIA: Some progress on FTA

HISPANICS: Villaraigosa makes alternative State of the Union

HAITI: Release of Jean-Juste

CUBA
The new head of the US Interests Section in Havana (Sina), Michael Parmley, shows every sign of living up to his controversial predecessor, James Cason. On 28 January, Parmley responded to criticism that the US was provoking Cuba by erecting a huge electronic billboard on the Sina building with scrolling messages including quotes from Martin Luther King and Gandhi and questions such as "If it is a battle of ideas, why can't you disagree with your government?" Parmley said "This is not a provocation (but) the beginning of a dialogue (and) the continuation of what we have been doing in Cuba for years with the aim of reaching the people. Change has already begun in Cuba_ It will be the Cuban people who will decide the how and the when." The government of President Fidel Castro responded by starting construction work in Sina's parking lot, although it is yet to reveal what it is building.

Cason started the trend for provocative messages by putting up garish Christmas decorations outside Sina, including a Santa Claus, candy canes and white lights wrapped around palm trees and a sign reading "75", a reference to the 75 dissidents that were rounded up and imprisoned in 2003. Cuba responded by putting up a huge billboard in front of Sina emblazoned with a swastika and showing photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by US soldiers. The billboard had a large swastika in red and the word "fascist" covered with a "Made in the U.S.A." stamp.

MEXICAN BORDER
Representative James Sensenbrenner (R, Wisconsin) gave an interview to the main Mexico City daily newspaper, Reforma, on 31 January in which he accused Mexico's foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, of breaking US law. Sensenbrenner said that Derbez was lobbying illegally against the anti-immigration law (formally, the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (known as HR4437). There are lots of rules on how lobbying can be done in the US that are supposed to stop foreign governments corrupting US legislators. Derbez said that Sensenbrenner could say what he liked but Mexico and he himself would go on standing up for immigrants in the US. The Sensenbrenner bill is due to come before the US Senate soon.

It now appears that the Bush administration will not present its own proposals for immigration reform. President George W Bush, in his State of the Union address on 31 January, called for improved border security and a guestworker scheme for migrants to the US, but gave no clue about whether the administration would do anything to bring either (or both) about.

COLOMBIA
The free trade negotiations between the US and Colombia got off to a reasonable start when they restarted in late January in Washington. On 31 January, the Colombian trade, industry and tourism minister, Jorge Humberto Botero, announced that the two countries had agreed on rules for liberalising the liquor market in Colombia. The US had wanted Colombia to change the way it taxes drinks. Colombia argued that it could not do this because drinks' duties provide money for the health service and are also an important source of local government revenue. The US reserved the right to go to the World Trade Organization to get the duties changed, after an initial period specified by the FTA. The negotiations for an FTA are due to conclude on 4 February.

The deal breaker is likely to be agriculture: Colombia fears that its farmers could be wiped out by US agricultural exporters. Another major problem is second-hand clothes: the US wants to be able to export them to Colombia but Colombia fears for its textile industry if this is allowed.

HISPANICS
Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democrat (and Chicano) mayor of Los Angeles, was put up by the opposition party to respond to President George W Bush's State of the Union address on 31 January. In a press release in Spanish, Villaraigosa argued that, contrary to what President Bush claimed, things were getting worse in the US. People were working longer but getting paid less and standards were falling. He said that it was shocking that 11m adults in the US could not read a bus timetable nor fill in a job application form. He claimed that 4m people had fallen out of the American middle class since Bush became president in 2000..

HAITI
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, welcomed the news that Haiti's interim government had released Gérard-Jean Juste, a Roman Catholic priest and ally of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on 29 January so that he could fly to Miami to receive medical attention. "I applaud the humanitarian decision reached by the Interim Government of Haiti to allow Father Jean Juste to seek appropriate medical attention. US officials actively engaged the Interim Government in support of this decision," Rice said.

Gérard Jean-Juste was diagnosed in Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Jean-Juste would have been the candidate for Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas (FL) coalition in the presidential elections scheduled for 7 February had the authorities not imprisoned him in July 2005 for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping and murder of journalist Jacques Roche earlier that month. Those charges were dropped but Jean-Juste still faces charges of having illegal weapons and being involved in illegal gang activity. Jean-Juste denies the charges, and his supporters say he was jailed by the interim government to prevent him from running for the presidency.

8 February 2006

08 February 2006 Hits: 99

VENEZUELA & CUBA: Vote against US over Iran

MIGRANTS: Bush sticks with temporal visa plan

ANDES: US to cut anti-drugs funding

MEXICO: State Department issues another warning

LOBBYING: US congressman attacks Derbez

VENEZUELA & CUBA
In a 27-3 vote, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board voted to report Iran to the Security Council over its clandestine nuclear activities. Iran has been coming under tremendous international pressure - led by the US government - to stop its uranium enriching activities. Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil voted in favor of the reprimand. The Cuban and Venezuelan governments joined Syria and voted against the resolution. The US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, said the vote sent a "very powerful signal" to nations seeking nuclear technology for bellicose activities. The US and the Venezuelan government are currently entangled in a battle over President Hugo Chávez 's desire to purchase military equipment. In recent comments, Chávez seems adamant that his country has the right to pursue nuclear technology, albeit always stating it will be used for peaceful purposes only. In 2004 Brazil was on the receiving end of the US pressure to open its nuclear plants to the IAEA inspectors. The Brazilians only relented after receiving guarantees that its centrifugal technology would be kept secret. At the time, the Brazilian foreign office stated that Brazil would comply with the agency's inspections in order "to give an example to Iran". .

MIGRANTS
The US President George W Bush told reporters that the government continues to support plans to grant temporal visas to foreign workers who have received a work offer in the US. Bush asked the US congress to grant US$247m for the project but warned that a series of measures to increase border control under the government's national security policy will have to be in place before the plan is put in practice. The government's national security policy proposal involves a clamp-down on illegal immigration, including the criminalization of "undocumented stays", the speeding up of deportations, an increase in the number of immigration officers and a controversial project to build a wall at the cost of US$800m along the US-Mexican border. The government has also asked congress to approve a new budget which includes US$300m to improve border patrols, a 29% increase in relation to the previous budget, and US$21m to facilitate the arrest of would-be immigrants.

ANDES
The US government is planning to reduce its anti-drugs aid to Bolivia and Peru for each of the next two years. This year the aid to the two countries will drop from US$91m to US$80m and in 2007 it will go down to US$67m. The US congress has yet to decide whether to ratify the budget changes that the administration sent to it on 6 February. US anti-drugs aid to Bolivia for fiscal 2007 will be cut by US$13m according to the revised proposals while aid to Peru will be cut by US$8m. The US said that it was making the cuts to increase funds for the war against terrorism. Bolivian coca-growers said the cuts were designed to put pressure on the new government of President Evo Morales, which does not support the US policy of eradicating coca. The US is not planning to cut anti-drugs aid to Colombia, which anyway gets the lion's share of the money. Colombia will get US$465m in anti-drugs money in 2007. The overall anti-drugs budget is down by only US$5m for 2007 at US$722m.

MEXICO
The US State Department issued a new warning on 6 February about the dangers of travelling in various parts of Mexico and advised US citizens not to take valuables or irreplaceable items, such as birth certificates, to Mexico. The State Department's consular advice was particularly alarmist about Mexico City, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo and the whole state of Sinaloa. The State Department was scathing about the effectiveness of Mexican state and federal police forces and the law enforcement system in Mexico in general. Last year the Mexican government complained about the terms used to criticise its law enforcement efforts.

LOBBYING
For the second consecutive year, congressman James Sensenbrenner (R, Wisconsin) gave an interview to the main Mexico City daily newspaper, Reforma, on 31 January in which he accused Mexico's foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, of breaking US law. Sensenbrenner said that Derbez was lobbying illegally against the anti-immigration law (formally, the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (known as HR4437). There are lots of rules on how lobbying can be done in the US that are supposed to stop foreign governments corrupting US legislators. Derbez said that Sensenbrenner could say what he liked but Mexico and he himself would go on standing up for immigrants in the US. The Sensenbrenner bill is due to come before the US Senate soon.

15 February 2006

15 February 2006 Hits: 68

BRAZIL: Brazilians held in solitary confinement

VENEZUELA: Solidarity with Iran

BOLIVIA: Morales seeks Sanchez de Lozada's extradition from US

HAITI: Bolton urges calm after election fiasco

REGION: Rice talks democracy, immigration

BRAZIL
Two Brazilian men, Fernando de S Lima Monteiro and Rogrio Zanotelli, arrested in September and January respectively for being in the US illegally, are being kept in solitary confinement in prisons in Suffolk, New England. According to the Centro do Imigrante Brasileiro (CIB), US authorities decided to punish the two men after both carried out a hunger strike on 5 February in which six other Brazilians took part. The CIB maintains that the hunger strike, which is now finished, was called in protest against the conditions in which they were being kept by the US immigration authorities. Despite UN rules forbidding the detention of immigrants in prisons destined for common criminals, the Brazilians were sent to a maximum security unit. The Brazilian consulate in Boston confirmed that the men are being kept by US authorities and told reporters that it is taking "all the necessary measures to have them deported by the end of February". The CIB, however, considers it "unacceptable" that the Brazilian government has not criticised the confinement and the treatment of Brazilian immigrants by US authorities.

VENEZUELA
The president of the Iranian parliament, Gholamali Haddad Adel, thanked the Venezuelan government for having voted against reporting Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities. According to Adel, the two countries fight common causes, the most important of which is "the fight for freedom". Adel said that the US government's opposition to the Iranian nuclear programme is not based on nuclear energy per se but "because [Iran] wants to be independent", adding that "US support for Israel, a country which possesses weapons of mass destruction, confirms my words". The president of Venezuela's national assembly, Nicolas Maduro, responded to his Iranian peer saying that "a great alliance against the decadence of imperialist politics" is forming around the world. The Iranian government confirmed it had restarted its uranium enrichment programme last week.

BOLIVIA
President Evo Morales has appealed to the US government to extradite Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, the former Bolivian president who fled the country in 2003. "I am calling on, asking my colleague [George W] Bush and his government to do justice together for the people", appealed Morales after presiding over a memorial ceremony for the victims of the street clashes that left over 70 people dead in 2003. The Bolivian government is preparing a formal extradition request to be sent to the US in the next few days. Sánchez de Lozada fled to the US amid an uprising that left dozens dead after sending troops to crackdown on demonstrators in El Alto, the poorest neighbourhood of La Paz, in October 2003. Protesters demanded changes in Sánchez de Lozada's US-backed free-market policies, including his plan to send Bolivian gas to the US in via Chile.

HAITI
The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, in his capacity as president of the UN, appealed for calm in Haiti on 14 February, a week after the inconclusive presidential elections. "The members of the council express their expectation that the counting of ballots and the remaining steps in the electoral process mandated by Haitian law will continue to be transparent and meet international standards," he said. "They strongly urge all parties to respect the results of the election and refrain from violence," he added. This underlined the Security Council's concern that allegations of electoral fraud made by former president Ren Prval, who ended up just shy of an absolute majority but well ahead of all of his rivals in the elections, and two members of the nine-man provisional electoral council (CEP), could trigger violent unrest, especially with a second round run-off not due until 19 March. The Security Council also announced that it would extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, Minustah, for a further six months.

REGION
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met the ministers of foreign affairs of Mexico, Luis Ernesto Derbez; Colombia, Carolina Barco, and El Salvador, Francisco Lanez as well as the vice-president of Panama, Rubn Arosemena on 14 February to discuss issues of democracy, immigration and trade in the hemisphere, the state department spokesman, Sean McCormack said. "We firmly believe, and I think these other states share the belief, that good governance coupled with expansion of trade opportunities will benefit the entire hemisphere," McCormack said.

22 February 2006

22 February 2006 Hits: 63

BOLIVIA: State Department has kind words about Morales

BRAZIL: US court allows sect to use Brazilian hallucinogenic tea

IMMIGRATION: McCain warns ambassadors

TRADE: DR-Cafta to begin in March

VENEZUELA: Chávez sends kiss to Rice

BOLIVIA
The State Department said, on 21 February, that there had been a positive start to relations between the US and the new government of President Evo Morales in Bolivia. Morales is also the leader of the coca-growers union in Chapare, central Bolivia. The deputy spokesman for the State Department, Adam Ereli, said that both Bolivia and the US shared a commitment to fight against the illegal drug trade. "I think, frankly, that relations can be characterised more by continuity," Ereli said. This is a significant change from the worries expressed by the National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte, at the beginning of February over the mixed signals Morales was sending over coca and the renationalisation of the energy industry. Morales has held regular meetings with the US Ambassador in La Paz, David Greenlee, over coca cultivation. Earlier this week he dismissed claims that there was "tension" in Bolivian-US relations over coca-leaf production. He said both countries shared a "zero-tolerance" stance against cocaine production. Morales said that since his government legalised the domestic cultivation of coca in Chapre there had been no violence in Cochabamba.

BRAZIL
The US supreme court decided unanimously that the US government must allow the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV in English) religious sect to use a hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon which, according to the sect's members, brings them "closer to God". The sect, which started in Brazil in the 1930s, has 130 members in the US (mostly in New Mexico) who use a plant called ayahuasca as an infusion during their religious ceremonies. The Brazilian government legalised the use of the plant in 1987. The US supreme court's ruling challenges the government drugs policy as it goes against US anti-drugs legislation. The judges argued, however, that the prohibition of the tea would have restricted the UDV members' freedom of religion. The case started in 1999, when US authorities intercepted a shipment of ayahuasca from Brazil.

IMMIGRATION
John McCain, one of the two Republican senators for Arizona, warned Latin American ambassadors who held a meeting to lobby congress for immigration reform not to get carried away. "The ambassadors have a role to play in providing information about migrants, their contribution to the US, their remittances and the effect large scale deportations would have on their countries, but the US congress will take the decision on immigration reform," he said. The House of Representatives has approved a tough proposal, known as the Sesenbrenner bill, which would criminalise illegal migrants who have settled successfully in the US and advocates more walls along the Mexican border. This bill is about to be considered in the senate. McCain opposes the Sensenbrener bill and has proposed a more liberal bill, in partnership with Senator Edward Kennedy from Massachussetts. The ambassadors from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic held a joint meeting in Washington on 21 February to lobby for a more liberal immigration reform.

TRADE
The US trade secretary, Carlos Gutiérrez, said that El Salvador and Nicaragua will be ready to set in motion their free trade agreements with the US in March under the terms of the deal signed by the US with Central American nations and the Dominican Republic (DR-Cafta). Gutiérrez said that DR-Cafta could get underway with El Salvador and Nicaragua first and the other participants could start when they were ready. This will put the pressure on Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic to fulfil the entry requirements, and Costa Rica, which is yet to ratify DR-Cafta. Separately, Panama, which is pursuing its own trade deal with the US, said that it was satisfied with the standard of US phytosanitary and zoosanitary conditions after a Panamanian technical and scientific commission conducted an inspection of US laboratories and institutions charged with animal health. Panama's minister of agricultural development, Guillermo Salazar, said that there was absolutely no health threat to Panamanians and the trade talks could get going again. Salazar's predecessor, Laurentino Cortizo, resigned from his post in January over his concerns that Panama would be compelled to compromise its food health standards in order to seal the deal with the US. Cortizo said he feared the trade deal would mean relaxing phytosanitary measures, which could put Panamanians at the mercy of diseases such as foot and mouth, mad cow disease, and bird flu.

VENEZUELA
President Hugo Chávez sent "a kiss" to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, or "Condolencia" as Chávez refers to her. The presidential affection was due to Rice's silence since Chávez warned her to "keep quiet" following her remarks that Venezuela was "a test for democracy" and "spelt danger to Latin America". According to Rice, the US government has been in constant talks with leaders in the region to "show a united front" against Chávez . In answer to Rice's comments Chávez threatened, once again, to cut Venezuelan oil supplies to the US and accused the US government of financing the Venezuelan opposition. The Venezuelan vice-president José Vicente Rangel said that "the opposition in Venezuela is in the US". Rangel said that President George W Bush had transformed Chávez into "a scapegoat for [Bush's] own failures".

1 March 2006

01 March 2006 Hits: 83

SUGAR: US announces new quota

IMMIGRATION: Senate tackles immigration

BOLIVIA: Negroponte still sceptical about Morales

VENEZUELA: More US worries

EL SALVADOR: Protests against Cafta

SUGAR
The US government increased its sugar import quota because of the damaging effects of the 2005 hurricane season. Brazil benefited the most. Out of the 262,000 extra tonnes of sugar that the US will import in 2006, 52,000 tons will come from Brazilian sugar mills. Last year Brazil exported 308,000 tonnes of sugar to the US market. All sales that exceed the new quota will face import duties.

IMMIGRATION
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its first meeting on immigration reform on 2 March. The committee will consider the bill tabled by the influential Arlen Specter (R, Pennsylvania) who chairs the Judiciary Committee. He tabled a 305-page bill on immigration reform on 24 February that could put the senate on a collision course with the House of Representatives which passed a much more hardline bill in December, proposed by James Sensenbrenner. Crucially, the Specter bill calls for an amnesty for the 11m illegal migrants who have settled successfully in the US; the Sensenbrenner bill treats them as criminals.

BOLIVIA
John Negroponte, the director of National Intelligence, told a senate committee on 28 February that President Evo Morales was still sending out "ambivalent signals" about his policy intentions, even though, Negroponte admitted, Morales had moderated his statements on coca and hydrocarbons. In January 2006, Negroponte told the senate that Morales intentions were unclear and likely to be hostile to US interests, particularly over coca-eradication and the nationalisation of hydrocarbons.

VENEZUELA
Michael Maples, the head of US military intelligence, told the US senate on 28 February that Venezuela was buying arms not only for its own defence but also so that it could intervene militarily elsewhere in "Latin America, South America and the Gulf [of Mexico]." Maples was speaking at the same senate committee during which John Negroponte accused Venezuela of conducting an "extravagant" foreign policy.

EL SALVADOR
Four thousand street vendors, university students, and members of labour unions protested the regional free-trade agreement with the US (DR-Cafta) on 28 February, just a day before the agreement was to be implemented. Supporters of DR-Cafta say it will help bring the country out of poverty, while protesters argue it will hurt small businesses. Five people suffered injuries due to the protests after police responded to rock-throwing with tear gas and rubber bullets. Protests against the trade agreement have also sprung up in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Honduras and Nicaragua are due to implement DR-Cafta on 1 April; Guatemala on 1 June, and the Dominican Republic on 1 July. Costa Rica is yet to ratify the agreement but is expected to do so if, as seems likely, Oscar Arias, is proclaimed president.

8 March 2006

08 March 2006 Hits: 67

DR-CAFTA: What will Costa Rica do?

DRUGS: US government praises Brazil's efforts

IMMIGRATION: Pew Hispanic Center estimates 11.5m to 12m illegal migrants in US

BOLIVIA: US downplays row over FCTC

NICARAGUA: Sandinista victory not inevitable

DR-CAFTA
Oscar Arias was officially proclaimed the winner of Costa Rica's presidential elections on 7 March. Arias takes office on 8 May. His victory could have important ramifications for DR-Cafta, the free trade agreement signed by the US with five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic. Arias said in his election campaign that he wanted to ratify DR-Cafta (Costa Rica is the only signatory nation yet to ratify the treaty). However, his rival in the elections, Ottón Solís, campaigned in favour of renegotiating DR-Cafta. Arias might struggle to get DR-Cafta through congress, where his Partido Liberación Nacional will fall short of the 29 legislators needed to gain a majority in the 57-seat legislature. The deciding factor will be a supreme court ruling on whether a simple majority or the support of two-thirds of legislators will be needed for DR-Cafta's approval. Arias could stitch up a simple majority by turning to the smaller parties which have already said they will approve the bill. Getting a two-thirds majority would be very difficult, requiring reaching a compromise with Solís's Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC). El Salvador became the first country to officially launch DR-Cafta on 1 March amid protests coordinated by the opposition Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).

DRUGS
The State Department's annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report praised the Brazilian government for its efforts to curb drug trafficking in 2005. The report lists several actions taken by Brazil last year, including increasing anti-drug operations by the federal police and the Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras's(Coaf) efforts to investigate money laundering. The report, however, indicated that Brazil continues to function as "an operational base" for cocaine smuggling to the US and Europe. The report is not so approving in relation to terrorism though. According to the State Department, Brazil should "increase control on terrorism financing activities" in the Triple Borders with Argentina and Paraguay. The US sub-secretary of state, Anne Patterson, said that the US intelligence has "considerable information" that there are such activities in the region. The Brazilian government has always denied that resources are sent to terrorist groups from Brazil.

IMMIGRATION
On 7 March, the Pew Hispanic Center published its annual estimate for the size of the illegal (it says unauthorised) immigrant population of the US. The estimate, of between 11.5m and 12m, is based on the 2000 Census; the March 2005 current population survey, and the monthly current population surveys up until January 2006. The March 2005 CPS showed that there were 11.1m illegal immigrants in the US. The Pew Hispanic Centre uses the monthly figures, and other sources, to extrapolate the current position. In the 2000 Census the illegal immigrant population stood at 8.4m. There are two sorts of illegal or unauthorised migrants: those who had valid visas but stayed beyond the visa's expiry and those who crossed into the US illegally. The Pew Hispanic Center points out that some migrants with temporary protected status are also technically unauthorised: it suggests that there may be 1.2m of them in the US.

BOLIVIA
The US embassy in La Paz issued a statement on 7 March saying that it was still seeking a constructive dialogue with the Bolivian government and the decision to withdraw support for the elite Fuerza Contra Terrorismo Conjunta (FCTC) should not affect this broad range of constructive relations. On 3 March, Colonel Daniel Barreto, the US military attaché in La Paz wrote to General Wilfredo Vargas announcing that US support and training for the FCTC would end and that the Bolivians should return US$300,000 worth of equipment. President Evo Morales initially said that the equipment would not be returned but then the Bolivian position was modified to a request that the issue be handled by diplomats rather than by soldiers. The US embassy also (virtually) apologised to the government for Barreto's claim that the US had lost confidence in the officers commanding the FCTC. The US embassy said that the US respects Bolivia's sovereignty and does not seek to impose candidates for leadership positions.

NICARAGUA
The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, said on 7 March that the recent electoral process in the two autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast, Región Autnoma del Atlántico Norte (RAAN) and Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur (RAAS), was positive and demonstrated that a triumph for the opposition Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in national elections in November is "not inevitable." After listening to the preliminary report given by the supreme electoral advisory, Trivelli told journalists that it was difficult to extrapolate national election predictions from the regional results, but they showed that the FSLN, the favourite to win in the RAAS and the RAAN, might not do as well as expected. The final results gave the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) over 12,000 votes more than the FSLN; the PLC won 40.3% versus the FSLN's 27.3%.

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