In fact, there is a new form of isolationism in reverse. It is the rest of the world acting in many ways to isolate the US by the simple political means of walking away from it and making their own future agreements with each other without even inviting the US as observers. Representatives from 60 - I repeat SIXTY - nations recently met in Lima Peru. The US was not there!
The EU, China, India, Brazil, Russia......all making forward progress while we sit in our own mess.
European Union, Latin American Nations to Meet in Peru
The Vice-President for the Latin American and the Caribbean region of the World Bank will attend V Summit of Heads of State and Government of Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union LAC-EU.
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Peru, May 6, 2008—At the sixty-nation summit between European Union and Latin American Countries to be held in Lima, Peru, on May 15-17, the World Bank will advocate for an inclusive and sustainable globalization agenda aimed at leveling the playing field among developed and developing countries . With economic growth rates unmatched in Latin America since the late 1970s, the Bank sees an opportunity to move forward an agenda of social equity, broadening opportunities for all citizens.
According to Pamela Cox, the World Bank’s vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, who will be attending the summit, the destiny of too many people in the region is still determined by race, gender and geography.
“In the Latin American and Caribbean region today, a boy from an urban home with educated parents earning 25 dollars per day and fewer siblings is many times more likely to finish primary school on time and have access to electricity, adequate clean water and modern sewage at home than one from a rural home with less-educated parents and more siblings,” Cox said. “These children, because of circumstances completely outside their control, will have very different chances in life. Latin America is dealing them a very different set of cards,” she added.
“After several years of strong economic growth, Latin American and Caribbean nations now have the potential to expand opportunities for all of their citizens. This will contribute to sustain growth in the long term,” she added.
Together with Cox, other senior officials from, governments, multilateral organizations, business executives and academics will address a Business Forum on May 15th. The panelists include Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez, Slovenian Prime Minister and European Council President Janez Jansa, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European External Relations and Neighborhood Policy Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and Inter-American Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno, among others.
The summit will be the fifth in ten years since the semiannual meeting began in 1999. The two regional groups met most recently in May, 2006, in Vienna.
European leaders are expected to seek to build on promises to launch free trade talks made at the last summit two years ago in Vienna, Austria. Nations had also pledged to create new aid programs to combat poverty. EU and Latin American leaders will be also addressing climate change policies.
Leaders from 25 of the 27 EU member nations are expected to attend. Italy, due to pending elections, and Cyprus, will be absent.
At the Vienna summit the EU agreed to open separate free trade talks with the Central American nations of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; and the four Andean nations of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Free trade talks with the MERCOSUR nations Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay began in 2000 but failed in 2004 over the opening of agricultural markets.
web.worldbank.org
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