Bush Loses Nothing, Gains Little at Summit

AP ^ | 11/5/5 | DEB RIECHMANN

[SmithL]

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina -- President Bush left the Summit of the Americas Saturday with no more than he expected: a cold shoulder from some Latin American leaders, no consensus on a free trading bloc for the hemisphere and biting criticism from anti-U.S. protesters and Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.

It amounted to a nothing-lost-and-little-gained two days for the president.

He may have made progress on setting up a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina. After hours of talks, 29 of the 34 summit nations expressed a desire to keep negotiations alive but adjourned the meeting without agreement.

Bush avoided a potentially embarrassing confrontation with Chavez, whose speeches were a rallying call for thousands of protesters opposed to the trade area and Bush policies. After those demonstrations Friday, a smaller number of hundreds of protesters broke storefronts and set fire to businesses in this seaside resort city. Saturday was calm.

The Bush administration didn't travel to the summit with high hopes.

The White House viewed the stop as important, if only to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the Americas in the face of the widespread impression that his administration's interest in the region has been on the back burner since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

[martin_fierro]

AP: "Bush Loses Nothing, Gains Little at Summit"

Must've been a smashing success, then.

[goldstategop]

"Potentially embarrassing," huh? The MSM's dig at the Leader Of The Free World knows no bounds. Why, they never describe Hugo Chavez's neo-Marxist ideology as retrograde. Leftists are immune from any criticism but Bush is just a cowboy. Yeah, right. There's no bias here!

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[caryatid]

{YAWN}

The whole thing sounds like it was a waste of time.

[go-ken-go]

NO, it was THEIR loss.

[CFC__VRWC]

The media has conferred rock star status on Hugo Chavez. They're like 13-year-old girls squealing over a boy band, they're so smitten with him.

[Txsleuth]

And Jimmah Carter is his biggest fan in America.

[Mike Darancette]

I think the Monroe doctrine should be repealed for many of those South American Countries.

[jveritas]

Did you see this moron Chavez literally "jumping up and down" while giving his "Hate America" speech to the communists demonstrators with a backdrop of a huge poster of Che Guevara? Now imagine our President making a clown of himself like this commie Chavez, what will the liberals and their media say? If I am a Venezuelan I will be very embarrassed to have a hateful communist clown like Chavez as my President.

[MSCASEY]

The only way to find out what happened at the summit will be when the next report is put out. Then we will be able to see if there are any new mandates that have been agreed upon.

I know the last report to the OAS we had put that we have accomplished the no child left behind as part of the mandate and also UNESCO was another mandate.

There are quite a few of them.

Here is the link were you can find out from the actual summits about what has happened. They also have all the agreements from the previous summits.

http://www.summit-americas.org/

Ms Casey's Daughter

[Loyal Buckeye]

According to the MSM, Chavez was the star of the talks.