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Bush to focus on trade in talks with Uruguayan president
By Laurent Lozano
AFP
MONTEVIDEO
Petroleumworld.com 03 12 07
US President George W. Bush on Saturday will hold trade talks with his Uruguayan counterpart, Tebare Vazquez, as mass protests continue to dog his five-nation tour of Latin America.
The US leader was expected to fly by helicopter early in the morning to the presidential retreat of Anchorena, where the two heads of state were to focus on ways to expand and balance trade between the two countries.
Uruguay is seeking broader access to the US market for its textiles, software and rice, officials said. Trade in biofuels, medicine and intellectual property rights are also on the agenda.
Security was high in the Uruguayan capital as authorities braced for more protests after two McDonald's restaurants were heavily damaged before Bush's jet touched down in Montevideo late Friday.
Bush arrived from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest the war in Iraq and the trade ties Bush came to promote.
Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez sniped at Bush from Argentina, where he gathered 35,000 protesters to listen to him taunt Bush as "political dead meat" and say "Gringo, go home" in English.
Talks with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva netted commitments to breathe life into moribund World Trade Organization talks and collaboration on promoting ethanol as an alternative fuel -- in part to cut US dependence on oil from countries like Chavez's Venezuela.
However, even members of Lula's own Workers Party took to the streets to protest Bush's presence and to demand less of his brand of free trade and more of Mercosur, a trade bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Brazilians burned US flags outside the Sao Paulo hotel where Bush and Lula held talks Friday after visiting an ethanol depot.
When Bush arrived in Sao Paulo Thursday night, a massive peaceful march was under way, with anti-US slogans, while smaller groups of protesters hurled rocks at the US consulate and clashed with police.
He insisted the United States did not get enough credit "for trying to help improve people's lives."
"The American people care deeply about social justice ... we believe in education and health," he said. "We believe in supporting programs that help lift people out of their current conditions and we want to help."
However, even before he left Washington on Thursday, protesters battled police on Wednesday and Thursday in Colombia, northernmost South America, where Bush will not arrive until Sunday.
By the time he landed in Montevideo Friday, protests had long been planned, by labor groups carrying huge effigies of a married couple as Bush and Vazquez, whose pregnant belly is gestating "Yankee (military) bases," trade deals and foreign debt.
The "un-welcome," as some protesters called it, did not bother the US president, a White House spokesman said.
"The president enjoys traveling to thriving democracies where freedom of speech and expression is the law of the land," said Gordon Johndroe in Brazil.
Friday, Bush denied neglecting Latin America: "The characterization that our back has been turned is not borne out by the facts."
Preferring that Bush would forget about Latin America was Chavez, who led an "anti-imperialist" rally claiming Bush's Latin American visit was "an imperial offensive" and that the US president was offering little more than handouts.
Elsewhere in Argentina, hooded protesters on Friday threw rocks at police and burned US flags outside the US Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires.
Bush faces widespread anti-American sentiment in Latin America, where leftists who oppose his views have recently been elected or re-elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, while moderate leftists are in power in Argentina and Chile.
In addition to Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia, Bush will visit Guatemala and Mexico during his trip, which ends on Wednesday.
AFP 10 0605 GMT 03 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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