QUITO, 28 April 2006 — Arab and South American nations that sit on the world’s biggest oil reserves agreed Wednesday to boost their cooperation in the energy sector, in a statement released as they met here. “We ask the private, public and mixed capital companies of the two regions to create links and implement strategic initiatives geared to promoting investment and technical cooperation in the energy sector,” ministers and experts from 24 countries and the Palestinian territories said after their two-day meeting in Ecuador’s capital.
“This cooperation may include oil, natural gas, biofuels and electric power geared toward (sustainable) development,” it added. The statement was signed by representatives of Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian territories, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, the UAE, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the presidents of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela plan to sign a “People’s Trade Treaty” to counter free-trade deals Washington is seeking with some Latin American countries, Bolivian officials said on Wednesday. The announcement came hours after Bolivia’s economy minister said the country might withdraw from the Andean trade bloc, or CAN, if fellow members Peru, Colombia and Ecuador forged ahead with US free-trade deals.
Bolivia’s warning followed a similar threat days ago by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who announced his country would pull out of the bloc to protest the trade accords Colombia and Peru hammered out with the United States. Chavez, a close ally of Communist Cuba, considers the Washington-led free-trade agreements a bid by the Bush administration to cement US economic domination of Latin America. His message has resonated in a region where free-market policies have failed to alleviate chronic poverty. Bolivian Planning Minister Carlos Villegas said President Evo Morales would travel to Havana for a weekend meeting with Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro to formalize what he called the “People’s Trade Treaty.”