CUBA: Panama's President MartinTorrijos said the Panama Canal should be a tool to help to boost economies in the region as summit wraps up

Developing nations, including Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, moved to forge a anti-U.S. alliance and support Tehran's right to nuclear technology at a summit of Non-Aligned nations on Saturday (September 16). More than 50 heads of state and leaders from over 100 developing countries were debating a document backing Iran's right to nuclear technology for peaceful ends and another sharply critical of Israel's recent war in Lebanon. Governments with friendly ties to Washington, among them India, Pakistan, Chile, Peru and Panama sought to steer the summit way from confrontation and finger-pointing at the United States and took on less conflictive tones. "When you remove ideologies, everyone realizes that we have issues in common and instead of exasperating the differences, what we attempt to find are the common points on which we can build. The reality of the countries in Latin America is very similar, some on a higher grade than others: the problems with poverty, the problems with access to basic public services, they obligate us to maintain common policies but above all else, if we were able to achieve that the common points and our natural resources are serving the process of our development I think it would be the best kind of integration that we could do," said Panamanian President Martin Torrijos. Torrijos said the Panama Canal should be a tool to help to boost economies in the region and overcome differences. Panama is preparing to hold a referendum on an ambitious plan to expand the Panama Canal which links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. "The canal, a canal that has to serve all of the world's countries, determines that Panama has to be a country that helps overcome differences, generate consensus within the region," Panama's President Martin Torrijos said. "We have tried to avoid that ideology determine the level of relations between countries in the region." During a news conference on the sidelines of the summit, Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the summit's final resolution had passed unanimously a clause defending the right of nations to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful means. "Our countries have the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful means," Perez Roque said. "We reject the monopoly over nuclear technology, we reject hypocrisy and the double standards, we reject that those who have nuclear weapons expand them and prohibit others from using nuclear energy for peaceful means to produce electricity." Perez Roque also insisted that there was absolutely no difference between ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. "I can tell you that Raul (Castro) is a Communist militant like all of us and believes like all of us in socialism as the system for our country and he is a soldier loyal to the Revolution, like Fidel and there is not the slightest different in the way of thinking between Raul and Fidel," he said. Cuban President Fidel Castro, a symbol of opposition to Washington, was supposed to preside over the summit but was too ill to attend. The 80-year-old communist leader, who took power in a revolution in 1959, ceded power temporarily to his brother Raul Castro on July 31 after undergoing surgery to stop intestinal bleeding. Raul, 75, the world's longest serving defense minister who lacks his brother oratorical skills, has shed his military uniform for a business suit to host the summit and read brief speeches. Critics say NAM is a relic of the Cold War that has lost its way in the decades since it was founded by nations that wanted to assert their independence from both Washington and Moscow.

ITN Source | September 17, 2006

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