[Peace-discuss] Hegemony slipping thru our fingers...

[C. G. Estabrook]

  	Venezuela hosts Afro-Latino summit

Venezuela's president has urged leaders from Africa and South America to help 
form a "multipolar" world to counter Western economic dominance.

Hugo Chavez told the second South America-Africa (ASA) summit, currently being 
held at the Venezuelan resort of Isla Margarita, that the summit would help the 
mainly poor nations improve ties and rely less on Europe and the US.

"This is the beginning of the salvation of our people," Chavez said in an 
opening address on Saturday to the two-day meeting attended by 28 African and 
South American leaders.

"The 21st century won't be a bipolar world, it won't be unipolar. It will be 
multipolar. Africa will be an important geographic, economic and social pole. 
And South America will be too."

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, called for the creation of a "Nato of the 
South" by 2011.

"The world isn't the five countries on the UN Security Council," he said.

"The world's powers want to continue to hold on to their power. When they had 
the chance to help us, they treated us like animals, destroyed our land. Now we 
have to fight to build our own power."

Trade boosts

The leaders are expected to put together a document backing stronger links 
between the two continents and urging global bodies like the UN and World Bank 
to give poor countries more power.

Energy infrastructure development and joint oil project cooperation were the 
central topics of the meeting.

Rafael Ramirez, the Venezuelan minister of energy and petroleum, said that 
co-operation agreements will seek to build up domestic energy capacity and 
resources.

"All the energy infrastructure, both in South America and in Africa, was 
designed and developed to meet the energy requirements of the industrial powers 
that our countries were satellites of," he lamented.

A major oil exporter, Venezuela is seeking to make ties with African states.

Chavez promised this month to build an oil refinery in Mauritania and sell crude 
oil to Mali and Niger in West Africa, a region that is emerging as a major new 
oil frontier.

A draft statement from the summit also highlighted the need to create new 
financial architecture to regulate world markets in the light of the devastating 
economic crisis, and a rejection of the drug trafficking that plagues the two 
regions.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, said there was "no global 
challenge in the 21st Century that cannot be tackled by Africa and South America."

Other leaders present at the summit included Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, 
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and the Democratic Republic of Congo's Joseph Kabila.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/09/20099271133771129.html