State Department Summit Coordinators Upbeat on Implementation

  
Terry Tracy, assistant summit coordinator of the State Department's Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination, was the main speaker at a briefing on the Quebec Summit of the Americas at the University of Miami's Dante Fascell North-South Center in late May.

Tracy asserted that the Quebec Summit will produce concrete, practical results. Despite the growing number of "unfunded mandates," she insisted that Summits have their place in promoting face-to-face contact and attention to regional issues. The most dramatic example at the Quebec Summit was the Democracy Clause.

One controversial point was the emphasis on private sector partnerships for development assistance. Tracy spoke with enthusiasm about USAID's Global Development Alliance, an initiative that has the full backing of Secretary of State Colin Powell. She also cited the Summit's call for "social responsibility" on the part of businesses as a new force for carrying out Summit action items. In her view, lack of development progress is more a question of coordination between the "players" (governments, NGOs, universities and corporations) than of a lack of resources. Interestingly, these private sector initiatives follow a similar logic as the Bush administration's faith-based initiative - putting more responsibility for serving the poor on private instead of public institutions.

A great deal of the discussion focused on civil society participation. The meetings with civil society carried out through the efforts of NGOs such as Participa (Chile), FOCAL (Canada) and Esquel (USA), as well as the open meetings of the Special OAS Summit Committee, were cited as examples of the impact that civil society has had on the Summit deliberations. Some participants mentioned the Hemispheric Social Alliance's decision not to send representatives to the civil society meeting with government ministers at the Summit, but it was explained that the HSA had pledged months before not to enter the "wall of shame" that surrounded the compound to protest the repression of demonstrators at the World Economic Forum meeting in Canc�n, Mexico. Robin Rosenberg of the North-South Center pointed out that whether inside or outside the perimeter, civil society groups were defending the same positions. Critics have argued that many of these demands are met in the hundreds of Summit action items, but this argument failed to impress those at the meeting and much less the civil society organizations that see the Summit Action Plans as never getting off paper.

Although still unpublished as of this moment, the translations of the first results of the nine FTAA negotiation groups presented to the Buenos Aires Trade Ministerial in early April are forthcoming. Participa will receive official Summit support to develop its website civil society clearinghouse at sociedadcivil.com. Tracy admitted that other mechanisms must also be developed, and she was unaware of the institutional success of MERCOSUR's Socioeconomic Forums and other working groups that have produced consensual agreements between labor, employers and consumer groups. As one of the participants pointed out, however, these agreements have not been accepted by governments and the general feeling is that the groups have not been as effective as they have claimed. Much remains to be done to get civil society input at the local level in almost every country in the hemisphere.

Finally, Terry stated that the National Security Council is very active on issues related to the Summit and the Americas in general. The NSC has been holding regular meetings and pushing for information as part of the White House's real interest in hemispheric affairs, she claimed. According to Tracy, the president continues to mention the Summit in private conversations. That in itself is music to the ears of South Floridians who depend greatly on the growth of trade and integration with the Americas.