Venezuela hosts Afro-Latino summit

[ensho]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/09/20099271133771129.html


Venezuela's president has urged leaders from Africa and South America to help form a "multipolar" world to counter Western economic dominance.

Hugo Chavez told the second South America-Africa (ASA) summit, currently being held at the Venezuelan resort of Isla Margarita, that the summit would help the mainly poor nations improve ties and rely less on Europe and the US.

"This is the beginning of the salvation of our people," Chavez said in an opening address on Saturday to the two-day meeting attended by 28 African and South American leaders.

"The 21st century won't be a bipolar world, it won't be unipolar. It will be multipolar. Africa will be an important geographic, economic and social pole. And South America will be too."

-snip-

Rafael Ramirez, the Venezuelan minister of energy and petroleum, said that co-operation agreements will seek to build up domestic energy capacity and resources.

"All the energy infrastructure, both in South America and in Africa, was designed and developed to meet the energy requirements of the industrial powers that our countries were satellites of," he lamented.

-snip-

A draft statement from the summit also highlighted the need to create new financial architecture to regulate world markets in the light of the devastating economic crisis, and a rejection of the drug trafficking that plagues the two regions.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, said there was "no global challenge in the 21st Century that cannot be tackled by Africa and South America."
-snip-
-------------------------------


this is a good thing